Floor Statements

Mr. President, I want to talk to most Oklahomans about pharmaceuticals, about the cost of drugs and going to the pharmacy.

They don't think a lot about supply chain issues--though, I actually have a bill that is working on this, and this is an issue we have got to resolve.

About 10,000 of the active pharmaceutical ingredients come from communist China. We are very exposed there. That is a very big risk. We have got to work to be able to make sure that we can get access to our pharmaceuticals without being dependent on China to do that. That is a risk that people want to solve, but it is one that they don't really talk about the most. Most of the time, we talk about the cost of a drug and its availability at their local pharmacy. Let me talk about both of those.

As ironic as it sounds, they are tied up together and not in the way that people think about most of them. Many people think that drug companies produce drugs, and then they sell it to the pharmacy, and then the pharmacy sells the drug. They think that that is the way it works. It is really not, actually. Those are two elements. There are drug companies that do research, that develop the drugs, and do all of the clinical trials and get it approved, and they are ready to go, but then there is a wholesale network back there that actually handles the distribution.

Then there is this group that almost no one has heard of called the pharmacy benefit manager. The pharmacy benefit manager actually, oftentimes, sets the real price for the drug. The drug company may produce it at one price, and the pharmacy is ready to be able to sell it at a price, but there is this group in between, the pharmacy benefits manager, that actually controls how it works.

Now, if I am at the pharmacy in Atoka, OK, the patients who are coming into that rural, beautiful community just know what they are paying at the counter; but if you go behind the counter and talk to the pharmacist there or in any other number of communities there, they will tell you they are struggling as an independent pharmacy, especially in rural areas, because there is a game happening with the pharmacy benefit manager that is to the benefit of what is called a PBM and to the detriment of the local pharmacy and of the patient. It is an issue that has got to be resolved.

About 80 percent of all of the drugs that move across the country right now are managed by three different pharmacy benefit managers. Now, I am not opposed to competition, but here is what they have actually done over the last several years: The insurer has purchased the insurance company, the pharmacy benefit manager, the group that actually does the purchasing of the drugs, then, often, the retail pharmacy as well for some of those big chain retail pharmacies. So they, literally, own the entire network there, and they can make money through the whole network.

Again, I am a free market capitalist, and I don't have an issue with people doing that, but here is what is actually happening: The leverage, then, of the big pharmacies owning all of the rest of the chain there is that if you are not in their group, you are facing some real consequences and a real squeeze because they now set the price and tell you how it works.

Let me give you a couple of examples of things that I believe we need to address and that I have been working on for years. Finally, the Finance Committee of the U.S. Senate is actually taking on this issue.

One of them is another little code thing that most people don't know exists, called DIR fees. This direct and indirect remuneration fee is how the whole process works behind the scenes at an independent pharmacy. Let me give you an illustration, and try to take this off the top shelf.

So let's say you are a company and you manufacture a product or that you are in retail and you sell a product that is out there. So you sell a product, whatever it may be--I don't care if it is a shirt or a couch, whatever it may be--and you are going to ship it out. You do the shipping, and you anticipate, once the shipping is done, you will be reimbursed for the shipping. Your job is to be able to retail sell it, ship it out, and then you get the reimbursement for that.

But what would happen in your business if you sold it, shipped it, and then after you shipped it and paid for the shipping, someone came back to you and said: ``Actually, that may have cost you $50 to ship that. I am only going to give you $20 for the shipping because I didn't like the way you did the shipping. I didn't like who you did the shipping with. I don't like the box that you put it in. I preferred a different box. So you lose $30 in the shipping because you didn't put it in the right kind of box''?

So here is what you do: The next month, when you are shipping, you make sure you put it in the box that whoever this is who is reimbursing you likes that certain kind of box. You put it in that box, you ship it out, and then you wait for the reimbursement. Instead, the company comes back and says: ``Oh, no. We have changed our mind. Now we would like a different color of box. So, yes, you put it in the right kind of box, but we would like it in a different color box, so we are going to reimburse you $10, even though it cost you $50.'' This may sound absurd, but welcome to the world of the DIR fees for pharmacies.

Here is what happens: They purchase the drug and get the drug, and they are ready to sell it. They sell it to the consumer. The consumer at the counter pays them for it. They have got their money from the consumer. It goes out the door. Then a month or a quarter or sometimes even a year later, the pharmacy benefit manager sends a notification to the pharmacy and says: ``Oh, we didn't like the way that you did that.'' It wasn't a quality thing. It was just how they did it.

Sometimes they will say: ``Well, you really should have prescribed two drugs to this person, and you just did one.'' Now, the pharmacist doesn't choose what drugs are going out to the patient

who is there; the doctor does. The pharmacist just fills the script. But the pharmacy benefit manager may say: ``Oh, you needed to have sold him more drugs than what you did, so we are going to reimburse you less for this.'' And they literally change the rules after the sale is done. So they will reimburse them, but sometimes they will reimburse them less than the actual drug costs to the pharmacist; so the pharmacist actually loses money on filling a prescription for this person, but they don't know that until months later.

That is what is happening right now in small pharmacies across America because the pharmacy benefit managers are focused on how they can make more money, even if it closes down rural, independent pharmacies.

What is interesting is that several of my rural pharmacies have told me they will get these change of rules where suddenly now they are selling drugs or sold a long time ago a drug to someone for less than what they are actually being reimbursed now. They will often get that notification and then a week later get a notification from that big pharmacy group saying: Hey, by the way, if you want to join our retail chain and close down your chain, we will buy you out.

It is a great way to put a little pressure squeeze on them to say: We are going to reimburse you less than the cost of your drugs unless you are one of our pharmacies, and then maybe we will do a little bit better.

Listen, this is the United States of America. We like competition, but we also like fair competition where people are actually reimbursed for the cost of their actual product, they are actually able to survive, and especially in rural areas, that independent pharmacy is able to thrive, because in rural areas across our country, there is not a lot of access to healthcare. So when people have a question about their drugs and about their healthcare, where do they go? The pharmacist in their small town, that is where they go.

DIR fees from these pharmacy benefit managers are directly putting at risk the survival of rural pharmacies across America and across my State, and I am going to do whatever I can to make sure those companies don't drive out of business local, rural pharmacies in my State because my people in my State need that support in their local area.

They may want to do mail-order pharmacy for some things. It is very convenient. It is great. If they choose to do that, it is fine. But if they are taking five drugs, they want to talk to somebody about this and what are going to be the effects. That is not going to happen with mail order; that is going to happen with somebody behind the counter who is going to talk to them and walk them through the process. That is what we need to be able to do.

This is not rocket science, and it is not onerous. It is standard performance metrics that the rules don't change on an independent pharmacy. They know what the rules are, and they don't change, especially after the sale has already been done.

The ability to be able to sell a product and actually at least have some profit, not lose money every time you are able to sell a product, shouldn't be a radical idea. The pharmacist is not getting to pick the price on this product. People think the pharmacist is the one making all the money. The pharmacist is not the one who picks the price on this product; that is set by someone else. And if they literally have to sell it at a price less than what they buy it for, that is not right. They are trying to be able to help their neighbors.

Let me give you another example, another issue I have been working on for years on this. This is a game play between the pharmacy benefit managers and the pharmaceutical companies that actually produce the drugs.

Most drugs, when they come out, are remarkable. The engineering and the science in modern medicine and the technology that it takes to be able to go through the clinical trials and get something approved that shows it is not only safe but effective is remarkable science.

There are some great researchers doing that, and it is incredibly expensive to do. Because that is incredibly expensive in the United States, we protect the patent rights of that new drug. So a drug, when it comes out--it is really expensive when it comes out because we want that company to make enough money to be able to pay for all the research they put into producing it and make a little profit or else they are not going to produce more drugs and more innovation. That is how it works.

But that patent is protected for a season. It is usually around a decade that it is protected for them. After that, then the drug can have drug competition. Those are called generics or biosimilars.

Most folks know, in their pharmacy--if they get a prescription from their doctor and they walk in and say ``Hey, I got this script from my doctor,'' the pharmacist will say ``It is a brand drug,'' many people will say ``Is there a generic of that?'' What they are really asking is ``Is there a cheaper version of that?''

For almost everybody, for your plan from your insurance company, you have one price for the brand drug and a cheaper price for a generic. Do you know why? Because generic drugs are cheaper, that is why, for everybody in the whole value chain.

But here is what is happening. Sometimes people will walk into a pharmacy, and they will say ``Is there a generic version of this,'' and their pharmacist will respond back to them ``There is a generic version, but it is the same price as the brand.''

It makes you pause for a minute and say: Well, that is strange. Why is the generic the same price as the brand?

If that has ever happened to you, here is why that is: because the drug company has worked with the pharmacy benefit manager to say: When competition comes, when the generic comes, if you will list the competition on the higher price what is called branded tier, we will give you a kickback every time our drug is sold in the brand. So you will make additional money if you will list the competition at a higher price.

What does that do? That causes every consumer in America to have to pay more at their pharmacist. It also affects the U.S. budget because, also, Medicare is affected by that as well.

This is a simple fix. Generic drugs should be on the generic tier. Branded drugs should be on the branded tier for sales. This is not rocket science, again; this is straightforward consumer protection.

This is an issue I have pushed on for a long time that I get a lot of pushback from. As you would expect, the pharmacy benefit managers and the drug companies aren't big fans of this. I have nothing in opposition to drug companies. I want them to continue to thrive, produce new drugs, and to be able to make a profit on the production of those new drugs. But when they are doing something to the consumer to drive up the price when they could get a cheaper price, that is bad for them and bad competition. Let's fix that.

Next week, the Finance Committee is going to take up a whole series of bills and options on pharmacy benefit managers. We need an intermediary. The drug companies aren't set up to be able to sell straight to the pharmacy. I don't have a problem with somebody being in between. I am not trying to kill that. But we do need to make sure that it doesn't hurt the consumer, doesn't hurt the Federal budget, and actually works for everybody in the process.

I know this is stuff behind the scenes, and everyone just wants to say: How do we get the price of drugs cheaper?

There are even folks who say: Let's just have the Federal Government take over all this pricing. The Federal Government will just set the price for everything. That will work beautifully.

I always laugh and say: Listen, if you think the Federal Government can solve every problem, try to get your passport right now, because right now, it takes about 18 weeks to get a passport, and it used to take 4 weeks.

The Federal Government is not the solution to everything on this. Protected free markets are a good solution to this. Competition will work if we allow the markets to actually work, but if someone is in the middle controlling all of that, that is something on which we need to intervene and to say: Let's have free and fair markets that are out there to get down the price of drugs, because there are generics, there

are biosimilars that are out there that will bring down the price if they are allowed to get to market. So let's make sure they can actually get to market and get down the price.

Let's protect the ability for rural, independent pharmacies to still take care of their patients. Those are their neighbors. They care about them, and they want to make sure they can still be there to be able to care for those folks.

We have work to do. I am glad the Senate is finally taking this up. I have been working on this for years. This is an area we need to address.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have a question for this body. It is not a legislative question. It starts first with just a question. It is a question for us to be able to think about, and it is a question, quite frankly, that is essential that we think about but that we don't think about very often because it is introspective, because it is personal, because it connects both science and faith and culture and background. But it is essential to who we are as people, human beings, and it is this simple question: When does life begin?

I don't say it flippantly. It is a real question. It is a question that we have had as a nation now the entire time we have been a nation, and it has been decided by different States and by different people from the very beginning of our Nation.

When does life begin? For some people, they would say life begins at birth, when I can see that child, when they are screaming and crying and just born, red-faced.

Some people would say it is actually 10 minutes before that birth; that it is not at birth; that it is just a little bit before.

There are some people who would back it up, and they would say: No, you are really a child when you are alive and you are viable--that is somewhere around 21 weeks' gestation now--that when you are viable, that is when you are really alive.

Some people would back it up even more to say: Not at 21 weeks; maybe at 15 weeks because science would say at about 15 weeks that child in the womb has a nervous system that is developed and they can feel pain.

Some would say: No, I would back it up more than that. I would actually take it to 6 weeks because, at 6 weeks, it is the early stages of a beating heart, and we would say, when that heart beat is actually happening, that is when that child is alive.

And others would back it up even further and would say: When that child has unique DNA that is different DNA than the mom or the dad--in fact, in that mom's body, every single cell in her body has the same DNA marker except for those cells. For those cells in the woman's body, that DNA is different. They are the only cells that are different, and, as they multiply and divide, that DNA signature grows, but it stays right there with that child.

It is a real question.

Fifty-one years ago, our country had different opinions. Different States had different ideas about when life began.

And each State voted, and each State had a debate in their State about when life began. That was what we were like from the very beginning of the country up to 51 years ago.

And then, in 1973, the Roe v. Wade decision happened in the Supreme Court, and, at that time, nine Justices said: Nope, individual States and people aren't going to decide this; the nine of us are going to decide this.

And for almost 50 years, the law of the land was that those Justices all made one determination for everybody--until 52 weeks ago, when that same Supreme Court, nine Justices again, said: No, this should be back in the hands of the people, where it has always been, because Justices shouldn't decide this issue. This is a decision we the people should make.

Justice Alito wrote the opinion in that decision, and he said this:

Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.

He said:

And far from bringing about a national settlement of the

abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and

deepened division. It is time to heed the Constitution and

return the issue of abortion to the people's elected

representatives.

The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon

it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our

democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and

then voting.

It is back to the people. So that is where we are.

Now, 1 year after the Dobbs decision came out, on the June 24 of last year, it is still back to the same conversation. We still haven't agreed as a nation when life begins. Maybe, we never will. But as a nation, now, that conversation is happening all over the country. Individuals are having the dialogue: When does life begin?

In the past year, there is really no way to know how many children are alive today that would not have been alive prior to the Dobbs decision. About half the States in America have already passed some sort of law to limit the number of abortions in their State, while about half of the rest of the country has either left abortion policies in place in their State or even expanded them.

Some of our States have no abortion at all in their States, and in some States, literally, you can have abortion all the way up until the second before delivery--late-term, literally the second before delivery--and choose to have an elective abortion. That is a pretty wide spread in our country. It is a pretty wide set of opinions.

And while we don't know how many children are alive today, we can be certain that there are tens of thousands of children alive right now who would not have been alive a year ago, prior to the Dobbs decision. That is tens of thousands of children who are alive that, in the next few months, will be giggling and laughing. Next year, they will be running around singing silly songs. Two years after that, they will be in kindergarten learning their colors. They will be alive today because of that Dobbs decision. And while I understand some people are disappointed that those kids are alive, I am not, and I am convinced our communities and our schools and our workplaces in the future will be glad they are there.

In the past year, while a lot of people have been celebrating the value of every single one of those children who have been born, there are some who have not been.

In fact, in my frustration, this Biden administration has been obsessed with increasing the number of abortions in America, not decreasing them.

Today, there have been numerous unanimous consent requests from the floor of this Senate asking to be able to take out all of the laws across the entire country and to be able to move it back to there is abortion on demand at any stage. They all lost on the floor today, but there is a push on the floor of this Senate today to be able to expand abortion on demand all the way up until moments before birth.

This administration has taken even more aggressive actions than the Senate took today. This administration has shifted a policy longstanding on mail order abortions--do-it-yourself abortions at home, to be able to take a two-drug cocktail to be able to have an abortion at home--where they have stripped out the rules that you have to see a doctor to get this prescription, remembering that this prescription actually takes the life of a child and causes excessive bleeding. You don't have to see a doctor anymore. They have now shifted that to say you have to see a medical professional of any type.

You also don't have to have any screening for ectopic pregnancies. If you take this two-drug cocktail--and the only way you can really determine that is a medical examination--then it could actually kill the woman while it takes the life of that child as well.

If you have the wrong blood type--and the only way to really determine that is to go see a medical professional, although the Biden administration is now saying you no longer have to see them--but if you take this particular two-drug cocktail and have the wrong blood type, it will actually make you infertile for the rest of your life as well as take the life of your child. So if you want to have a baby later, you can't.

The only way you would know one way or the other on that is actually having a medical screening and test, but the Biden administration is so obsessed with increasing the number of abortions in America, they have now said: Don't worry about going to the doctor. Don't worry about if you have an ectopic pregnancy or the wrong blood type.

In fact, they have taken even an extra step and have said to emergency rooms: If someone shows up in an emergency room who has taken this two-drug cocktail and is excessively bleeding, you do not have to report it to the FDA unless she dies.

Every other condition--excessive bleeding, on the edge of life, emergency room trips--don't report those. Those don't get reported anymore at all. Literally, they are saying we don't need the information about other side effects--only death--for this particular drug. That is an enormous shift. That is an administration that is obsessed with saying: We need more abortions in America, and if things go bad with this two-drug cocktail, don't tell us.

I mentioned before that there is a very, very old Federal law that still stands in Federal law that says you can't mail anything that is going to cause an abortion. It is against Federal law to put something in the mail and mail it to someone that causes an abortion. The Biden administration literally has put out a public opinion from their Office of Legal Counsel saying that law really doesn't apply anymore; it is old. It is trying to say: Well, it means something different than what it actually says. I would encourage anyone to actually read that statute and to come to any other conclusion other than what it says.

The Biden administration has made it very clear under the Department of Justice that, we know this is against Federal law to be able to mail abortion materials, but we are not going to prosecute this. Literally, it is against the law, but we don't care--so much so that even if a woman ends up in the hospital, in the emergency room and checked in, don't even tell us unless she dies.

Last summer, there were several of my colleagues who brought a bill to this floor to give a $100,000 fine to any pro-life pregnancy center that didn't perform abortions. Now, just let that soak in for a minute. Now, it didn't pass, but this body was debating and trying to shut down the advice of people who are in pro-life centers who say: I believe in the value of every child.

These pro-life centers, if you have never been to one, they are almost always completely run by volunteers. They provide ultrasounds to individuals who are trying to figure out ``Am I really pregnant?'' They provide free pregnancy tests to be able to help people as they are thinking through it. And, yes, they talk about that they believe in the value in life. But they also provide formula for babies, clothes for babies, diapers for babies. They provide parental advice and counsel for new parents who are terrified, and they say: Hey, we are going to walk with you. If you are considering having an abortion because you are afraid you will be alone and no one will be with you, we will be with you.

Last summer, a bill came to this floor to try to do a $100,000 fine to those folks who are trying to give away free formula, free diapers, and free mentoring, to people who would say: If you keep your baby, we will walk with you through these tough times.

This administration, the Biden administration, has shifted our VA hospitals into abortion clinics. It is against Federal law, but they have done it anyway. Literally, there is a Federal law that was put in place 30 years ago about VA hospitals and abortions, and it doesn't allow them. This administration has told the VA hospitals ``Ignore that Federal law that was passed 30 years ago because we don't like it; we are not going to enforce it'' and is literally taking--because there are not dollars allocated to this--literally taking dollars away from our veterans and their healthcare and moving it to doing abortions in our VA centers instead.

As far as we can tell, there are thousands of abortions that have happened in our VA centers across our country in the last few months, all of them paid for by Federal tax dollars, which is against the law, in a facility that was specifically noted could not perform abortions, which is against the law, using Federal dollars to pay for it.

It should not be a surprise to you that President Biden's budget-- every year he has been President, he has asked to take away the Hyde amendment. People may not know what the Hyde amendment is, but the Hyde amendment is what prevents abortion dollars from being used--from Federal tax dollars.

A lot of people across the country, I understand, have completely different opinions about abortion, but almost every person I talked to would say: I have a different opinion about abortion, but I don't think American tax dollars should be used to pay for elective abortions. But every year, President Biden has asked to remove the Hyde amendment so Federal dollars can be used to pay for abortions, elective abortions, across the country.

This administration is so incredibly extreme about increasing the number of abortions in America, it has even extended to our southern border.

The people who are here in this room know that I have come to talk about our southern border multiple times to try to bring solutions. There are solutions that are, quite frankly, nonpartisan solutions for how he we can solve some of the difficult issues of illegal immigration on our southern border. I am a huge fan of legal immigration, but I think unchecked illegal immigration and chaos on our southern border is a bad idea.

This administration, in the middle of what is going on on our southern border right now, has put out what they call Field Guidance 21 out of Health and Human Services to say that if an unaccompanied minor comes across our southern border who happens to be pregnant, that unaccompanied minor is to be relocated to a State that allows abortion. The guidance gives information about how to even transport individuals who are pregnant who cross our border to abortion clinics, and it gives special guidance for those who are in their last weeks of pregnancy on how to be able to take care of those moms as you transport them to get an abortion--late-term abortions. That is in the HHS guidance that is happening right now on our southern border.

This administration created a website to promote abortions with official Federal dollars that is connected to the White House website. In fact, this administration literally put it as a front-page piece on the White House website: Here is how to be able to get an abortion in America. They have given a $1.5 million grant to create a national abortion hotline so that anyone who wants an abortion, it would be easier to be able to get it. They have created a reproductive rights task force to try to evaluate all States and be able to get information out on how to be able to increase abortions.

When the COVID money was done, now a year and a half ago--the previous bipartisan bills on COVID all had a restriction on any of that money being used for abortions until the last partisan bill was actually put out, and that specifically allows for abortion with COVID relief dollars.

The Department of Justice did not engage when pro-life centers were being attacked. They have engaged to be able to go after people who oppose abortion. In the past couple of years, there have been 329 attacks on Catholic churches and 87 attacks on pro-life centers, just since the Dobbs leak came out prior to the actual release in June, but there have been no prosecutions to go after those folks. Apparently, if you attack a Catholic church or a pro-life center, the Department of Justice is not interested.

There are also conscience protections. Again, not all Americans agree on the issue of abortion. Many doctors and nurses go into medical practice because they have a passion about life. We have conscious protections in Federal law right now that if you tell your employer in a hospital that you have a conscience issue on performing an abortion and they compel you to do that, the Federal Government is charged to be able to step in and make that employer protect your conscience rights.

That has happened in the past under past administrations, but under this administration, literally when this administration came in, there was a nurse who had been compelled to perform an abortion against her conscience at the University of Vermont Medical Center. She had told her employer in advance that she did not want to participate in abortions, that she believed in the value of every child.

She came in one day to work. She was called into a surgery area, and the physician looked her in the face and said: Don't hate me for this.

She said: What?

Then she turned and realized that she had been called in and was being compelled--or she would lose her job--to perform an abortion and to be a part of that abortion procedure.

Typically, under previous administrations, that person would have been protected. This HHS dropped the case. Literally, it was midway through. The Department of Justice is no longer prosecuting. They are saying that is not relevant; literally saying: If you have a conscience issue as a nurse or a doctor performing an abortion, too bad. Change your occupation. We are not going to protect you.

Oh, and did I mention that if you are in the U.S. military now, under the new Biden policy, and you went to your commanding officer and said ``Hey, my grandmother passed away. I would like to get 5 days off to go travel, to go to my grandmother's funeral,'' you would be told no. But if you go to your commanding officer and say ``I would like to be gone 5 days to get an abortion,'' not only would your commanding officer, under the Biden administration, be instructed ``Yes, you can have 5 days' paid leave off,'' but they would also say to you ``How far are you going to travel? We are going to pay for your travel to reimburse you while you are gone.''

So if you need to go to your aunt's funeral, you don't get days off because that is too distant of a relative, but if you need to get an abortion, not only will this administration give you 5 days off to go get it, they will literally pay for your travel there and back to be able to go do it, not to mention the change in the Mexico City policy. Now we are paying for abortions overseas currently with Federal dollars.

HHS launched a new web page that actually gave out what they call creative ways for health clinics to advise teenagers on sex, birth control, pregnancy testing, and abortion. HHS, in fact, has proposed a new rule that they are in the process of finalizing which redefines ``reproductive healthcare'' to include abortion. It prohibits entities from cooperating with law enforcement or a court order if an investigation is related to an abortion. It redefines the word ``person'' to ``a human being that is born alive.''

HHS has also changed the billing requirements for the ACA--the Affordable Care Act--and has blatantly ignored the law on how abortion funding is done, in direct opposition to when this body debated that publicly.

If I can just mention one other thing, my State, like every other State, gets grants for what they call title X grants. These are Federal grants for cancer screenings for women, for contraceptives, for those that are in poverty. That is normal. We have that all over the country for every State. It is a typical grant that comes out to be able to have women in poverty get cancer screenings and get access to contraceptives.

My State was just informed that the Biden administration is cutting off our title X funds and will not send Federal dollars to Oklahoma for cancer screenings for women or contraceptives for women in poverty to my State. Do you want to know why?

The reason that the Biden administration cut off my State is because my State would not include an abortion hotline in all of our medical information going out to the citizens of my State. That is right. If my State would not promote ways to get abortion to women in my State, then the women of my State can't get access to cancer screenings or contraceptives for low-income women.

Literally, what they are saying is: You either promote abortion in your State, or women in your State can't get access to screenings. That is this administration's extreme policy on abortion.

Listen, I understand we have differences of opinion. I happen to believe every child is valuable. This administration believes some children are disposable and some children are valuable. I just don't find any child disposable in my world. I think they are all valuable. I think they are all important. I think we look in the eyes of those tens of thousands of children that have been born in the past year post Roe, and we look them in the face and we say, I am glad you are here. What are you going to be? What are you going to invent? What are you going to do? What is life going to be like for you?

And like millions of other Americans, they will have a chance to live out life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, because we are right there looking in their eyes. Let's have this conversation. Let's keep this dialogue going.

We are a nation that should talk about hard things in respectful ways. But let's talk about it, because there is lots of families in the days ahead that are counting on us living out our values and respectfully having dialogue where we disagree, because I think kids are worth it. So let's have that dialogue. One year after the Dobbs decision, we are not resolved, but at least we are talking about it again.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security released a press release yesterday to talk about what is happening on the border currently, especially on our southwest land border. I wanted to read just one line from the press release that was put out by Homeland Security yesterday, where they state in their press release:

The administration's plan is working as intended. [The

administration's plan is working as intended.]

Now, what they were referencing was what is happening on the southwest border and the number of people who are crossing our border that are being ``encountered'' at the border. That is the new term from Homeland Security for the number of people who cross our border illegally. They are ``encountered.''

In the past, those individuals--and what I mean ``in the past,'' I mean the past 2 years. Those individuals crossed our southern border and asked for asylum because they were told by the cartels what to say. The cartels would say to each individual as they crossed and paid the fee to the cartel: Tell them you are afraid in your country.

They would cross the border. They would say the words, ``I am afraid in my country.'' They would be given an asylum hearing date in the future. That date is anywhere--depending on where they go in the country--between 3 years and 7 years in the future. And they are told they can go anywhere in the United States they want to travel during that time period.

Now, that is what it used to be. The administration came forward and said: We have a whole new plan. Our new plan post-title 42--that is the end of the pandemic restrictions--our new plan is that we are going to tell people there is a rebuttable presumption that you don't qualify, so don't come.

So here is what has happened. Now you cross the border--and there are two ways you can cross the border. Now, this is the new plan: You can either fill out the paperwork before you come or, when you cross, we will fill out the paperwork for you.

If we fill out the paperwork for you, it will take longer for you to come into the country and cross the border or you can fill out the paperwork before. What is that called? It is called CBP One. It is an app that now you can download from anywhere in the world, fill out your paperwork ahead of time, and when you cross, they will quickly expedite you into the country for your asylum hearing anywhere between 3 and 7 years in the future or, if you cross between ports of entry, then it is going to take you probably another 8 hours or so for them to get all the paperwork filled out for you, and then you will still be released into the country and have a hearing 3 to 7 years in the future.

What does the administration mean when they said the administration's plan is working as intended? They have now split up the numbers, and they have announced: Look, our numbers are less than 4,000 people now who are crossing the border illegally.

It was just 10,000 people 2 weeks ago. Of course, what they didn't say was the week before that, it was right at 5,000. But what they are not saying is they have actually taken--if you fill out on the app ahead of time, they don't count those numbers anymore.

Here is what has happened. We have the same number of people illegally crossing our border this week that we had 3 weeks ago and that we had 3 weeks before that.

The administration now has just split up the numbers, how they are counted. If you fill out the app in advance or we fill it out for you when you cross the border, those are now two separate sets at the border, but they are still the same exact people who are crossing into the country. Except when I was at the border just 2 weeks ago and asked how all of this is working, I asked a very simple question: What are you noticing that is different now than what was different before?

The response from CBP was: Well, it is the same. People are still moving in. They are allowed to be able to come into the country between ports of entry or at ports of entry, that is the same. But what has changed is a dramatic increase in the number of non-Spanish speakers who are coming.

And the first words that I had from several different individuals I spoke with, both from nongovernmental organizations and from our Federal law enforcement when I was there last, was that we are worried for our national security. In fact, Federal law enforcement used the exact term. We have military-age, single adult men coming into our country from non-Spanish-speaking nations in the Middle East, West Africa, Russia, and China now in much higher numbers than we had before.

Just to set the context of what is happening now while the administration is saying the plan is ``working as intended,'' here is what has happened: In the first 2 weeks of the end of title 42, we had 1,000 men from Mauritania, West Africa, come across our border--1,000. Exactly none of them do we have criminal background information on-- none of them.

Let me just compare 2 years ago to this year. So far this year, and this year is not over--if I look at Mauritania, we had 90 people 2 years ago from Mauritania; so far this year, 4,300--so far this year. By the way, that doesn't include the May number that I was just saying. That is 1,000 more. So we are well in excess of 5,000 this year so far from Mauritania.

From Iran, it has gone from 62 to almost 300.

From Syria, and we have no background information on any of the folks coming in from Syria, we have had right at 200 people come in from Syria so far this year.

From Pakistan, we have had over 500.

From Somalia, we have had over 1,600.

From China, we have had right at 10,000 people this year. If I go back 2 years ago, from China, it was 450.

Yes, there is a huge shift that is actually occurring of Middle Eastern men, North African men, men from Russia and from China who are accelerating across our southern border, because right now apparently the administration's plan is ``working as intended,'' and we have thousands of people who are still crossing our border.

I have heard even some recent reporting in the news on this that the numbers are way down. The numbers are way down. But apparently the press doesn't take the time to be able to look and see that the numbers have actually been split out into two different categories. The numbers are not down. In fact, the numbers right now would average somewhere around 450,000 a month--right now.

The highest month during the peak of the immigration surge under the Obama administration, the highest month that happened during that time period when there was chaos and cameras that were focused on the Southwest border--the highest month was 69,000. The administration is now saying ``Our plan is working'' when there are 150,000 a month coming across the border.

It is not working. It is fudging the numbers. It is trying to tell the American people: Look away. It is trying to say ``We are doing a whole new set of enforcement on the border'' when really what is happening is that people are being released into the country the same as they have always been released into the country for the last 2 years. The difference is, they are told: Hey, if you show up for your hearing 3 years from now, we may be more strict to you. But at the border, they are moving through just the same, being waved through.

I bring this up to this body to ask a simple question: Have we learned nothing from 9/11? Thousands of Americans died because a group of individuals overstayed their visas here in the United States. No one went to check on them. No one went to track them and just ignored the realities of what could be there.

We have a huge national security risk, and God forbid we have a huge terrorist attack again just because we want to tell everyone ``The plan is working as intended. Look away. The numbers are down'' when we literally have people coming in from all over the world who may be coming to work here or may be coming in for nefarious reasons. We don't know. We literally don't know if these folks are fleeing poverty or fleeing justice because we have no criminal history on these individuals coming in from around the world--none.

In fact, as frightening as it may seem, right now the current policy happening at the southwest border is if someone shows up without any identification or with a photocopy of an ID that they say is theirs, it is being accepted as real.

They can literally come in and say, I am from Mauritania or Somalia or Syria or Iran or China or Russia, and this is my name, and they have no ID. We are creating for them a new ID card that is an American ID card and handing them a new identity and saying ``Show up at your hearing 3 years from now, in the future. Travel anywhere you want in the country. You can use this card to fly, to travel, or to show as ID'' when we literally have no idea if that is what their name is or that is the country they are from. That is the plan that is ``working as intended'' right now on our southwest border. I think it is a huge national security vulnerability.

We need to talk about asylum. We need to talk about how we are going to define the national security risks of the United States. This body needs to have a real conversation about what legal immigration looks like and what we are going to say to the world about illegal immigration.

If any of these individuals were to travel into Canada right now, the Canadians already have a clear law dealing with asylum. These folks would not be accepted into Canada because it would violate their basic asylum rules on how they handle it. But they are being literally waved into our country with no ID, with no criminal background check, and released into the country under the promise that they will show up at a hearing 3 to 7 years in the future. Can somebody explain to me why that is logical?

If these same folks moved into Germany and said they wanted to claim asylum, Germany would put them in what they call a humanitarian center, where they would stay. They wouldn't be released into Germany. Germany would never do that. They would stay in that one humanitarian area while they process through their asylum claim, and if they didn't qualify for asylum, they would be sent back to their original country, and that is usually within about 2 to 3 months. We are instead handing them a brandnew ID, which we have no idea is their real name, releasing them into the country, and saying: We hope you show up 3 to 7 years from now at your hearing. Can somebody tell me that is wise?

I am not asking for something crazy or something, quite frankly, the rest of the world doesn't already do, but for some reason, this body is locked up to talk about what everyone sees as obvious, and we refuse to even debate the issues of asylum and national security.

This is not caustic and hard; this is reasonable, where most Americans are. But we are not even talking about it on the floor right now, but we should because it matters. The national security of our country is counting on us having adult conversations about the direction of our country, and I would encourage us to get started on this sooner rather than later for the sake of our future as a nation.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, years ago--talking like 15, maybe 18 years ago--I was speaking in a town in Oklahoma, and my daughter wanted to go with me, which was great. So we took off. I had reserved a hotel. And so we get there. We were going to stay overnight. And I was speaking somewhere the next morning.

We arrive at the hotel late that evening. When I got there and checked in, I knew initially we were in trouble. You have that feeling when you pull up to the hotel and you think this may not work. Pull up, check in, but there is no one at the desk. And then it just gets harder as we get to our room. It is dark. Lots of light bulbs are out in the pathway to get to our room to check in. And, actually, when I shut the door and the two of us came in, I shut the door behind us, and the crack underneath the door was so large I could physically see the patio and the balcony and everything outside. And it was so loud because it was right next to the highway. I thought, We are in trouble. This is just not going work. So we ended up packing everything up and just going to search and find another place and thinking there is no way we will both be able to sleep.

Why do I tell you this silly story? Well, when we were traveling and heading there, we anticipated one thing, and then when we got there and got to the hotel, it ended up being different.

I have to tell you, this past weekend, when I read through the 99 pages of the debt ceiling bill, I would read through a section of it, and I would get to the end of that section and be surprised at the ``except for'' at the tail end of each section. It is not what I expected when I read through the document, page after page.

I have to tell you, we are a nation that leads the world. We have the world's largest economy. We are to be responsible in how we handle our budget in the process. We are to get it right because we are the United States of America.

And I have been concerned for quite a while with the trajectory of our spending. And it challenges us as a nation to be able to change the trajectory of our spending because we have to start working back to balance. We can't get to balance in a year. It is going to take a long time to get there, but we have to get started in this process.

And my frustration has been that sometimes we seem to start and then we stop again and then we start and then we stop again.

In the several years that I have been here in the U.S. Congress, I voted for some debt ceiling increases because they changed the trajectory, and I voted against some because they were status quo or they didn't. I had higher expectations for this one.

Now, initially, when it came out, it was, this is going to save $2 trillion. And then it slowly got downgraded to it is going to save $1.5 trillion. Then, when we read the fine print and everybody was talking about how much it was going to save, I got to the fine print and found out, actually, it increases spending 3.3 percent next year, and the year after that it increases spending 1 percent again.

It actually doesn't decrease spending at all. It increases spending, both this year and next year. But then it has the promise of the next 8 years after that--it will only grow 1 percent a year after that every single year, except that is not an agreement this Congress can make. This Congress can only vote on things for this particular session of Congress. We can't commit the next Congress to actions of this Congress. Each Congress stands on its own. And everyone knows that.

It sounds good to say it is going to save these trillions of dollars in the next 8 years, except each Congress will actually vote on a budget for the next 8 years, and there is no commitment from future Congresses by this one to do that.

In fact, I have been here long enough to be able to see agreements being made for what a future Congress will do that didn't actually happen.

And so the $1.5 trillion in savings is only a decrease of the increase of how much we were ``planning to spend but actually hadn't budgeted'' because as many people may know, there is not a budget set for the next year of what we were going to spend. So CBO just assumed we were going to increase at least by inflation and any amount less than inflation is suddenly savings when there was no budget that was actually set.

So my first big surprise was, it actually doesn't reduce spending; it actually increases spending.

The next big surprise came when I started looking at how even some of the ``savings'' are actually managed. There is a supplemental piece that is in this or a piece that is set aside where it takes what they call rescissions--I am not going to get into budget gobbledygook that is tough for us all to be able to process. But there is about $22 billion that is taken out of items that were COVID spending that are not going to be spent and pulls it over into the Department of Commerce and leaves it there in the Department of Commerce amount and says we will decide later how to spend it.

Now, I ask the obvious question: Isn't this supposed to go to deficit reduction?

And the answer came back: Well, a few billion went to deficit reduction, but $22 billion actually went over into the Department of Commerce's budget and is being parked there, and they will have other opportunities to be able to spend those dollars in the future.

That is not really a savings on the rescission. There is permitting reform in this, which I am grateful for. Quite frankly, there is bipartisan support for permitting reform in many areas because we can't get lithium and cobalt. We can't move solar and wind power because of permitting, just like we can't move natural gas and hydrogen and CO2 because of permitting issues. We have to do major reforms in those areas to be able to make sure we can actually produce more energy for the future of our country.

So when I saw the permitting issues, then I thought, good, we need to get started on some of these permitting issues--except when I read through it, there seems to be a lot of exceptions to it.

For instance, there is a 2-year commitment to say, if you are doing the more strict environmental impact statement, you have to get it done in 2 years--well, unless the administration declares it complex, and then they have a lot more time; in fact, an infinite amount of time.

It limits you to 150 pages for an environmental impact statement, which is good; that actually brings the paper down--unless the administration declares it complex, and then it is a whole lot more. It limits the number of pages even, unless it is the appendix. If the administration declares actually these can go in the appendix, then there is actually no cap, no limit for that.

It also says that, in this time period piece, that if you get to 2 years from the environmental impact statement and if they don't achieve that--I asked a logical question: If an administration and an Agency doesn't get it done in 2 years, what happens?

The answer is: Well, you have to sue the Federal Government and that Agency to make them do it. And then it has to go through the court system, which, as this body knows, will take 2 or 3 years. If the court finds in favor, then the court can then declare the Agency has another 90 days to be able to get it resolved--unless it is considered complex, and then they have unlimited time.

So the permitting piece, as I read through it, I thought, why are there all these exceptions that are out there that give it an out for every single portion of it?

There is a section of the bill that talks about what is called administrative pay-go. That is a rule that has existed in some administrations before where they will say that if you are going to add a cost to America through an administrative action, you have to look somewhere else to decrease the cost, because by the Constitution, only this Congress can actually increase spending; that is not something the administration has the constitutional authority to do. That is a reasonable rule.

It puts in this administrative pay-go to say, if spending is going to increase based on a regulation, it has to decrease somewhere else. That sounds great--until I get to the very end of it, and it literally says: unless the Director of the Office of Management and Budget considers the additional spending necessary. No restrictions.

If it is considered necessary, then they have an unlimited amount that they can do. Even that restriction actually goes away on January 1, 20 days before President Biden's term ends, so it is not even all the way through the last 3 weeks. Even that restriction goes away. And I can't figure out why, suddenly, it gives 3 weeks of home base without a restriction like that. And why, if we are going to put a restriction in there, why end it in 2 years anyway? If it is a good idea, it should be a good idea for every President, not just for this one. Why would there be, suddenly, an out clause in it?

There is a 1-percent sequester that is across the board if appropriations are not done.

Now, I have to tell you, I worked with Senator Maggie Hassan on the other side of the aisle to resolve a way to end government shutdowns and actually do appropriations. We should do all 12 appropriation bills. The Senator who is chairwoman of Appropriations is on the floor right now. She and I have had these conversations. She has committed to doing all 12 appropriations bills. So am I. We can bring back regular order and actually go through the process.

We don't all agree on everything here in the body. Welcome to America, where 320 million Americans don't agree on everything. OK, well, let's talk it all out. Let's have the debate. Let's have the vote and go from there. We haven't had that ability in years.

Senator Maggie Hassan and I have a bill dealing with ending government shutdowns and pushing us towards doing the 12 appropriations bills. That is not a bipartisan bill. Frankly, it is a nonpartisan bill. I don't find anyone here who doesn't actually want to get us back to regular order. So we are trying to find a logical way to be able to do it.

But the way this bill sets up the sequestration to put this towards those 12 appropriation bills, it says that if appropriation bills are not done by April 1 next year, there is a 1-percent, across-the-board cut that will happen in the current year spending in the last 5 months of the year.

That is a pretty big spending. Except it really only hits defense because the way it is set up is nondefense will actually go up and defense will actually be cut by 1 percent from last year's amount.

What in the world? Why would it be structured that way?

No. 1, why would we set up a sequestration piece at all as an incentive? No. 2, why would it be designed in a shape where it hits defense and not nondefense in the way it is actually set up? And, No. 3, when there were other options, like Senator Hassan and I, through our proposal to deal with ending government shutdowns and to get to actual appropriations, why wouldn't we do something like that that is nonpartisan, that is simple and straightforward to be able to do?

The student loan suspension. There has been much publicity on the right about, well, this ends the student loan suspensions, except it ends it on July 30, when President Biden already says he is ending it on August 30. In fact, CBO looked at it and said this doesn't save any money at all because it was already going away. It doesn't really change anything. It literally moves it forward a month but doesn't change a thing.

Then there is a work requirement process. I have to tell you: I am a big believer in work requirements. Not everybody here in this body is on that. I think work is dignity. I think work encourages families and brings dignity to a family and an individual unlike anything else that a family can bring. I think it is great for kids to grow up in a community where the adults around them work and set that example, and they build on that. There is just a unique dignity in work.

Quite frankly, some of that just comes from what I have seen, and some of that comes from my faith, because when I look at even scripture, there was work in the Garden before the fall. Work is not a consequence of the fall. Work is a gift from God that gives us purpose and meaning and helps us set the next example. Anything we can do as a culture to encourage a culture of work, I think, is beneficial to people in families.

I understand full well there are those who are disabled, those that have kids. There are situations where it can't be done. I completely respect that. But in this particular bill, the incentives for work requirements has a little caveat stuck in the back of it that says all of this applies to these States and they can't take all these waivers where they pull away work requirements--they can't do those things unless Secretary Becerra--the Secretary of HHS--declares that that State is doing good work to try anyway. There are no restrictions on it. It just says solely that if Secretary Becerra decides that, it gets waived.

So as I look at the bill, I see a lot of good intentions in the bill, but I see a whole lot of exceptions. And I see a whole lot of ability for the administration to waive that, waive that, waive that, waive that. That undercuts the purpose of the bill.

Quite frankly, as a Congress, I wish that we could sit down across the aisle and we could have dialogue to say: What is Congress's responsibility? What are the policies that are wise policies? And not hand authority to the White House--Republican or Democratic--and say: Which is good policy that we need to put in place and do those things? One day, we will get back to that, but that day wasn't today. And that is frustrating for me.

I am going to oppose this bill today, but I want us to be able to keep working because we still have work to do, as one side knows as well. I know Congress is focused on this today, rightfully so. The American people expect us to get this resolved.

Tulsa Race Massacre

Mr. President, can I just tell you a little heartbeat issue for me? It is June 1. That may not mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but for those of us from Oklahoma, today is the 102nd anniversary of the worst race massacre in American history.

It happened in Tulsa, OK, May 31, overnight, to June 1. And 102 years ago today, Greenwood was a smoking heap of rubble after an all-night violence

and massacre on hundreds of Black Americans in North Tulsa.

It is a stain on our Nation. It is a stain on our State.

And 102 years later, I hope we still pause and remember as a State and we continue to learn the lessons and continue to be able to work towards being a more perfect union.

Today, the Greenwood Rising museum is open. Folks are coming in and out, talking about what happened 102 years ago. Folks at the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation are engaging in conversation. There are community groups all over North Tulsa, meeting with people just to be able to talk and to say: What have we learned 102 years later? How can we still be better as a Nation still?

We learned a lot. We have grown a lot. But it is unfinished business for us.

So on June 1, I remind us as a body, there was a massacre 102 years ago today. We shouldn't ignore this moment to remember how we take tragedy to triumph.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, debt is front and center in the national conversation again. That is entirely reasonable. We have a debt ceiling conversation right now about America taking care of our debts and our responsibilities, which we are a responsible nation, and we are going to do. But we should also have a grownup conversation about our spending to say: Are we spending on our priorities? Because when you have $31 trillion--actually, scratch that--$31.4 trillion because $400 billion is not a rounding error--$31.4 trillion in total national debt, we should pay attention to this, especially when we are currently adding $1 trillion in new debt every single year, and it continues to accelerate.

Recently, someone asked me: When does it get hard? When do we pass the point?

And I actually had to painfully say to them: 10 years ago because in the last 10 years, our debt has continued to accelerate like a rock rolling downhill, and it is going to be harder and harder to be able to manage this. At some point, we have got to be able to stop and say: Inflation is going up; challenges that are in our economy are increasing; we are spending almost as much on interest as we are on defense. At what point do we stop and say: We have got to be able to fix this?

Well, I have a perspective. The first step on actually talking about debt and deficit is actually taking it seriously and saying: What are we spending on that is a priority, and what are we spending on that is not a priority? Again, it is not unreasonable to be able to say that would be nice to do, but we don't have the money to do that. Let's set that aside.

And for whatever reason, in this town, anytime you talk about reducing spending of whatever percentage or whatever amount, everyone freaks out immediately, like, oh, you can't; there is no way we can reduce spending in government.

So we started, 7 years ago, a habit of our staff that we produce a book called ``Federal Fumbles.'' Every year we put out the ``Federal Fumbles'' guide, and that is just a set of ideas to say these are areas we believe the Federal Government has dropped the ball.

The Federal Government, and our Agencies, we had a responsibility to handle American taxpayer dollars prudently and wisely, but that didn't happen. So we asked the question: Is this really what we need to spend for? In a nation that is keeping up with our infrastructure, of our national defense, of education, of so many different expenses, and things that are truly governmental, we asked a simple question: With $31.4 trillion in total debt, is that what we need to spend our dollars on?

Now, just to set context because, again, this is difficult to be able to do, when you talk about millions and billions and trillions, it gets easy to go, those all sound alike. So they are similar. So people throw out millions of dollars or billions of dollars or trillions of dollars, and you just think, OK, I don't even understand what that is anymore.

So I break it down, as I have in the past--I break it down to seconds because that is something I can understand. A million seconds is 12 days--12 days. That is a million seconds. A billion seconds is 32 years.

So there is a big difference between a million and a billion: 12 days in 32 years; a trillion seconds is almost 32,000 years.

So let me knock that past us again. A million seconds is 12 days; a billion seconds, 32 years; a trillion seconds, almost 32,000 years.

And to put this into context of $31.4 trillion in total debt, that is 995,000 years--almost a million years of seconds--to get to $31.4 trillion.

The numbers here are large, and they are overwhelming. So again, why don't we talk about ways that we can actually save money. My reasonable conversation with ``Federal Fumbles'' every year is just to say: Let's talk about it. Is this really how we want to be able to spend Americans' taxpayers dollars?

We set up a top 10 list that we listed out some of the things that we just say, OK, of the 50 different examples--and we don't try to go into every single spending area, but we lay out in the guide for fumbles 50 different examples and just try to ask the question: Is this the best way to be able to spend America's dollars? Again, we have all got different perspectives and different ideas on it. I am just asking the question.

For instance, last year, the State Department did a grant to Ecuador to host 12 drag shows in Ecuador with American tax dollars. Now, we may have different opinions in this room on drag shows. I am just asking the simple question: Is the best use of American tax dollars to actually fund drag shows in Ecuador with U.S. tax dollars? I don't believe that it is.

Last year, we actually did a different funding through the State Department that was actually done--actually, this was the National Science Foundation. Excuse me. Strike that. It seems like a State Department thing. The National Science Foundation last year did a study of butterflies in Europe. So we funded, with American taxpayer dollars, a butterfly study in Germany where we paid a Swedish scientist to study butterflies in Germany.

I am not real sure American tax dollars was the best use of that, but that was one of the grants that was done last year.

Last year, there was also an NEA grant that was done to set up a display in Brooklyn for the Sergeant Pepper's

Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, by the way, is not even an American band. And I am not sure why we had to pay Federal tax dollars to be able to do that. My simple question is always: Why are tax dollars being taken out of Oklahoma to be able to do that?

Always popular, we had a $350,000 grant to study smart toilets. That was one of the grants that we actually paid for with our Federal tax dollars last year.

We also had a grant that was done studying Colonial Mexican Soundscapes. I am sure Colonial Mexican Soundscapes are fascinating, but we paid for a researcher to travel to Mexico and then to be able to write a series about the sounds of Colonial Mexico and how they could be used to be able to influence communities.

We, last year, did a study on helmets and seatbelts in Ghana to be able to study whether seatbelts and helmets were effective for saving lives in Ghana. Can I just go ahead and answer that question for free? Seatbelts and helmets are a good idea. They save lives--free. I can go ahead and give you that advice.

How do I know that? Because we have already spent millions of dollars in other studies here in the United States, but, instead, we spent money in Ghana studying helmets to see if they are actually a good idea there. And amazingly, they discovered, yes, they are.

There was also a grant that was done last year--I have to just walk this one through. This was at the Springfield Art Museum in Missouri. There was a grant to be on a display, an installation of the exhibit at a museum called ``Yoko Ono: Mend Piece.''

Now, let me just read this to you. It is a simple white room where shattered cups and saucers are placed on a table and participants are asked to mend the fragments together using common household items like twine, glue, scissors, and tape, and the resulting works are displayed on nearby shelves as evidence of the power of collective action.

Again, I am not opposed to fixing broken saucers in a public place and displaying them. All I am asking is: Why did Oklahomans work overtime last year to pay their tax bill to fund doing the Yoko Ono white room, where people fixed broken saucers? I don't have a good answer for that yet, by the way. I am still trying to be able to get that.

If you like wine country, great. You helped pay for it--one of the highest income areas in the world is Napa Valley, CA--one of the highest income areas in the entire world.

The good folks of Oklahoma helped pay for a wine pedestrian trail through Napa Valley because apparently Napa Valley didn't have enough cash to be able to pay for the 8-mile walking trail through wine country--some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world. So the taxpayers in Oklahoma had to pay for that wine country tour trail.

If you like traveling to Hawaii, enjoy the trip. When you get there, if you go to a farmers market, you will find out that you helped pay for that farmers market because the farmers markets in Hawaii received $3.4 million to be able to fund the farmers markets.

If you go to New York City and pay for a very high-dollar ticket to get into a private location in the Metropolitan Opera to be able to watch the opera, you will feel safer, I am sure, when you go to the Metropolitan Opera because almost three-quarters of a million dollars was given to the Metropolitan Opera in New York to help them install a new fire-suppression system with Federal tax dollars.

If you like traveling to Paris and you go to a butcher shop in Paris, you may be fascinated to know that since the 13th century, apparently butchers in Paris have come up with their own private language. It is like a supersecret private language among butchers in Paris. It is fascinating for the French to study, but unfortunately the American taxpayers paid for a study of French butchers' private language for fear that it is diminishing and fading away. So American tax dollars paid for this study in France to study the secret language of butchers in Paris. I can't tell you why.

You may know the story of the--let me see if I can pull this out--the parable of the sower. It is a famous Biblical story, the parable of the sower. This particular version of the parable of the sower was actually a little bit different. What your tax dollars paid for is actually an event that was done to teach climate futurism and to be able to use the parable of the sower from the Bible but to reteach a new religion called Earthseed, using the Biblical story of the parable of the sower and talking about humanity's destiny to be able to leave Earth for other planets. It wasn't the writing of a book; it was a conference for teachers to make sure teachers know how to teach this new version of the parable of the sower and about the religion of Earthseed to their kids. That was done with your tax dollars.

Not leaving Ghana alone, there was also a study done in Ghana last year--not only did we do one on seatbelt studies and helmet studies in Ghana, we also did an interview project that was almost $200,000 in Ghana to interview taxicab drivers and truckdrivers to ask them about how difficult driving has become with climate change, if it is harder to drive now in Ghana based on climate change. Your tax dollars paid for that.

If you don't like that I am discussing anything on climate change and you may disagree with that, well, perfect, because there was also a fund that was done with your tax dollars in the National Science Foundation to study how to influence people who disagree on the issue of climate change, with a study that was done for $400,000. It was a study on pluralistic ignorance gaps in climate change and to be able to determine how to speak to people, as the study says, who are ``ignorant'' on climate change and to be able to reeducate them on that. So if you disagree on this issue, we are also studying how to be able to reeducate you on this issue.

Last year, we also spent $991 million on soft-sided facilities--those are called tents--along our border with Mexico. Now, best estimates on this: There are about 2 million people who illegally crossed the border last year. If you run the numbers on it, we spent somewhere around $500 a person on the tent facility they were processed through just to travel across the border.

Listen, we have differences of opinion on lots of issues. I am respectful of that. I understand the people of Oklahoma don't think like people in other areas of the country. I also understand that not everyone in Oklahoma thinks the same way, and I am respectful of that. But I have yet to find anyone who wants their tax dollars wasted. People literally work overtime to be able to feed their families. They are working two and three jobs. In April, when they pay their taxes, they want to know it went to roads and infrastructure and national security. What we reveal in ``Federal Fumbles'' is, yes, some of that was done, but also some of it was done because we lacked oversight, and things were just wasted and thrown out the door.

We did a multithousand-page omnibus bill at the end of last year that literally no one had read--no one. There were no committee hearings in the Senate on appropriations at all last year, and trillions of dollars were spent, and no one knows what they were spent on.

We try to bring here some of the ways American tax dollars were spent. I am not just complaining about it; we bring this up to say: What are we going to do about it? Are we going to do more oversight, to ask more questions, and to spend money on our priorities and not spend money on what is not?

So we put out ``Federal Fumbles.'' You can go to the website Lankford.senate.gov to be able to download it and to be able to look at it. The goal of this is to get us all thinking about $31.4 trillion in Federal debt. Can we focus on spending on our priorities and target areas that are not?

Mr. President, can I do one quick addendum to my protracted speech on ``Federal Fumbles''? I have a staff member named Phillip Moran who worked like crazy this year actually pulling all these details together and some other team members who really help me a tremendous amount to do the research on this. As you can imagine, it is not one person who does this. I have a fantastic team that works very hard on this.

I want to say from this floor so the Oklahomans back home can also know,

there are some great people working for them every single day. I appreciate that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we remember, at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, 168 people were tragically murdered in the worst act of homegrown domestic violence and terrorism in our Nation's history. That was in Oklahoma City.

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City destroyed nine floors, where they collapsed in on each other. The physical impact to the building and of the bombing itself was felt 55 miles away, and the force of the blast damaged 324 surrounding buildings.

The emotional impact was felt around the world as, literally, the world stopped and stared at their televisions 28 years ago today, and the Nation felt the pain of those who were killed and of the survivors and of the family members who remained.

The victims included 19 children, many who attended the daycare in the building called America's Kids. A total of 219 children lost a parent that day, and 30 children were orphaned that day. It is estimated that 360,000 Oklahomans knew someone personally who worked in the Murrah Building.

The 16-day rescue-and-recovery effort took a toll on our first responders and our family members who held onto hope that their loved one was still alive. The events of April 19, 1995, changed my State and changed our country forever. There are incredible stories about survivors of the bombings who helped their coworkers escape the rubble and exit the building to safety.

In the midst of immense grief, we introduced what we now know as the Oklahoma Standard: the way Oklahomans immediately stepped forward to offer help, showed compassion to their neighbors in pain, donated blood, donated even their shoes that day to rescue workers and other individuals who needed help. Out of the terrible tragedy was demonstrated tremendous love.

By 3:30 p.m. on April 19, 1995, a family assistance center called the Compassion Center was set up at the First Christian Church in downtown Oklahoma City. The center was supported by the American Red Cross, hundreds of local clergy, chaplains, and mental health professionals.

Donations for victims and rescue workers poured in from fellow Oklahomans and Americans. Fourteen million dollars was donated to the Oklahoma City Disaster Relief Fund, and the Oklahoma Legislature created the Murrah Fund that pooled public and private dollars to assist victims with lost wages, grief counseling, funerals, and burial costs.

There is a lot to be said about the aftermath of the Alfred P. Murrah bombing. One notable piece that is often overlooked is the remarkable work of law enforcement that day.

See, law enforcement was called in from all over to able to assist, but one State trooper who was responding to it was actually turned around and was told to ``stay in your area. We do need to keep coverage across the State.'' So this State trooper, Charlie Hanger, stayed in his area way north of Oklahoma City on I-35.

On that day, in his normal duties that he was doing, he saw a yellow Mercury that had no license tag on it, and he pulled them over. He was just doing his job. The person he pulled over was the person who had actually committed the murders. Just a great cop doing his job.

The FBI came in from all over the country to come help. U.S. attorneys came to be able to help. Employees helped the FBI put together a drawing of the person. When they found out the truck that was actually used for the bombing was rented, they helped develop this, as the FBI worked, and they figured out that the person Charlie Hanger had pulled over was actually the person they were looking for at the same time and were able to speedily make an arrest.

My city and my State are very grateful to the FBI for the work they did that day, local law enforcement, U.S. attorneys, first responders, everyday Oklahomans who literally ran toward that moment, some staying literally for weeks and months going through the debris. You can't imagine the pain and the difficulty of digging through rubble and identifying people. What those first responders did and what those individuals who stayed on the pile did will never be forgotten by our State.

One resounding message from the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing is that life can be forever altered in a single moment. Oklahomans who lost their lives that day simply woke up,

went to work, dropped off their child at America's Kids daycare, thinking they would all come home that night.

There is a lot we can learn from those events. It reminds us that time with our family and loved ones is precious and should never be taken for granted. But we should also remember that the Oklahoma City bombing was driven by anti-American hatred. Single individuals with misguided government beliefs and hatred for people in government literally drove a truck bomb in front of a building full of people serving their Nation that day in a Federal building and chose to kill them just because of their hatred for government.

We can never allow our Nation to rise up with that kind of anger and hatred against fellow Americans. We are a nation that has disagreements, and we solve those by talking to each other as fellow Americans.

The Oklahoma City bombing memorial museum, which sits next to the memorial itself, continues to tell the story every single day, as they are today, of what it means to be able to have one person talking to another person to solve our problems and to work out our differences.

On the 28th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, we still feel the sharp pain and loss in Oklahoma. While some in the Nation look back on it and think that was a long time ago, we remember.

We thank the first responders and the law enforcement officers for their invaluable service. We remember the lives of the victims lost, and we continue to pray for their families and for the survivors who are still gathering together just to check on each other as families. Most importantly, we will continue to tell the story of what happens when rage and hatred for fellow Americans spill over into the destruction of life. We remember.

And I would ask this body to do what we are doing in Oklahoma City today. We are pausing for 168 seconds to remember the 168 victims whom we lost that day. So would this body pause with me for 168 seconds?

(Moment of silence.)

Today, we honor those who were killed, those who survived, and those who were changed forever.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wanted to be able to come back to the floor to talk about the SOIL Act. The SOIL Act is a bill that I introduced last year that deals with Chinese ownership of land in the United States.

Since I have introduced this bill, several of my colleagues here in this room have also introduced other bills that are similar to it. Good. That means people are paying attention to this and the conversation is starting. I am all for as many ideas as we can get out here on how to be able to solve this because the most basic principle that we have right now is, if we miss an obvious trend that is happening here, it is to our economic peril.

This chart has just a very simple number on it. In 2020, Chinese entities owned almost 200,000 acres of land in the United States. One year later, they are at almost 400,000 acres in the United States--in 1 year. This is from 2020 to 2021. This trend is happening all over the country, and we are certainly seeing it in my State of Oklahoma.

When I travel around my State, I hear people talk about the border; I hear people talk about the economy; and I often will hear people say: Hey, there is a lot of foreign ownership going into land right now in Oklahoma, and it is dramatically affecting the price of real estate, the price of agricultural land but also what is happening on that land.

Now, my State may be a little bit different than some others or it may be that the same thing is happening in your State.

About half a decade ago, my State did medical marijuana legalization. It was a decision of the voters of my State to be able to say they want to get access to medical marijuana for those who need it. The problem is that Chinese entities and Chinese criminal organizations and Mexican cartels immediately flooded the market in our State, and we have seen a rapid rise in marijuana in our State, much of it done in the illegal market. It is not just happening for the ``medical'' side in our State; it is being distributed all over the country from my State.

Just a few months ago, I was looking on different worldwide news sources and was shocked to see in the BBC News headlines for that day a story about my State on the global news headlines about a group of Chinese nationals who were shot execution-style in a grow operation in Oklahoma. The individual who executed them was on the run and then was arrested in Florida a couple of days later. He was also a Chinese national.

Chinese criminal organizations have moved into my State in mass numbers. The year after marijuana was legalized in my State for ``medical'' purposes, we had more land sales to foreign entities in Oklahoma than any other State in America as Chinese criminal organizations and Mexican cartels immediately moved in to be able to set up shop in distribution nationwide.

Many people said they didn't think it was legal for foreign entities to be able to own land in the United States. Well, there is a gap, actually, in our law. It is an issue that I want us to be able to deal with on how we are going to challenge this issue.

Let me give you just another perspective beyond just the Chinese side of things--another perspective on this. Ten years ago, 321,000 acres in Oklahoma were owned by a foreign entity--10 years ago. Today, it is 1.67 million acres in my State are owned by a foreign entity--from 321,000 to 1.67 million acres. There is a rapid transition that is happening. Foreign entities are rapidly buying up land. I will tell you, if you are a farmer and rancher, they would say, you know, there are some things God is just not making more of, and one of them is land. You can't just give that up.

This is a problem. It is a problem nationally. It is not just a problem in the marijuana industry; it is a problem nationally. It is a problem dealing, quite frankly, with our national security. We currently have a 1-mile buffer around all of our military installations that you can't own land if you are a foreign entity within 1 mile around our military installations. We now believe that is not nearly enough.

Quite frankly, foreign nationals from many countries like China are buying up the land around our critical infrastructure, around our telecom infrastructure, around military bases,

around government offices. They are not buying it because they are looking for another place to invest. They are buying it to set up shop for their own operations and their own spying and their own control of our economy. We should pay attention to this.

As we deal with different entities, like data or healthcare entities, they have to go through a process. It is called the CFIUS process. It is that process, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--the abbreviation you will hear for Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is CFIUS. That process includes entities like the Treasury, Commerce, Defense, the intelligence community--they all have to be involved if a foreign entity wants to be able to buy, let's say, a telecom company or they want to buy a lot of big data around a hospital, whatever it may be. It has to go through that process on that.

Agricultural land is not in that though. There is no review for that. So there is no prioritization for foreign investment of our land, even where it is, so this has become an ``out of sight, out of mind'' issue.

The bill that I have called the SOIL Act does a mandatory review of CFIUS of that process--the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--for agricultural land and the entity. That is in two categories: if they are a national security threat--that country is a national security threat--or they are what is called a nonmarket economy.

Let me explain what those two things are. The national security threat is pretty straightforward. That is China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. If China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea want to buy land around the edge of one of our military bases, right outside that 1-mile buffer, if they want to buy lots of land around our infrastructure or telecom, it is not for our good. We should have a review of that.

The second thing is a nonmarket economy. This is an economy that is run by the government, not by private business.

Again, China would fall squarely into this as a communist nation. You cannot run an investment business--especially a foreign entity outside of China--without it running through the Communist Party in China, so they are a nonmarket economy.

One of the most basic parts about this is, if you are going to buy any kind of land in the United States and you are from one of those countries that is a nonmarket economy or that is a national security threat, we should have a mandatory review of that so they could actually do that kind of purchase. But we just want to know why, where, how much, what is the purpose of this, and we can ask those practical questions of it.

The SOIL Act that I have also tries to close some of the loopholes that are in our Federal law. Let me talk through a couple of those. Currently, we have a foreign entity--let's say a Chinese entity--that is doing an ag purpose there, they would still be available for agricultural subsidies in the United States. Well, that needs to be closed.

We shouldn't do agricultural subsidies for any entity that is a foreign entity coming into the United States doing investment, so it closes that loophole. It closes all of the disclosure loopholes dealing with agricultural landholdings.

Right now if you have a landholding that is around 10 acres, then you don't have to disclose it. Well, a lot of these operations are less than 10 acres, and there is a lot that you can do on 10 acres if that 10 acres also happens to be right on our critical infrastructure, right on our telecom, or maybe it is also doing a criminal operation.

Also this deals with issues of long-term leases. Entities would come in and say, well, we are not really buying the land, we are just doing a 99-year lease. Well, that is the equivalent of actually owning the land, and so it gets around that loophole.

It also beefs up our enforcement for those who violate our foreign investment laws. It also requires annual reporting, for China and Russia in particular.

Listen, I am not trying to stop foreign investments into the country. If BMW wants to be able to come do manufacturing here in the United States for their cars or Nissan or any number of manufacturing products that are here from all over the world, they are welcome to be here. They are welcome to do foreign investment.

But when Iran is buying up a big chunk of land, we should ask the question why they are doing that. And, currently, we don't even have a process to do that. When China is snapping up land by the hundreds of thousands of acres, we should ask the question: Why is China buying hundreds of thousands of acres of American land all of a sudden? What is the goal?

We should ask that question; and, currently, we don't have a process to do that. So let's fix that. The SOIL Act gets on top of that issue and says we see the trend. Let's not just watch this go sideways; let's actually engage. And let's protect our national security, and let's protect our national interest.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I often come to the floor of the Senate to talk about one particular item as I want to be able to walk through what we are going to do to be able to solve it.

Honestly, today, it is a little different for me. In some ways, I feel a little bit like Will Rogers with his statement, the famous Oklahoman, who said that all I really know is what I learned from reading the newspapers, which is an alibi for my ignorance.

Today, I want to just be able to talk about random stories that I have read lately that are kind of in the ``you can't make this stuff up'' column. It has been frustrating for me.

Right now, 7 in 10 Americans feel like America is on the wrong track--7 in 10. I mean, I don't know why, but they just feel like something is not going right, like things are out of control. It has been frustrating to me to be able to go through so many news stories lately and to be able to say: If I put this in front of 7 in 10 or maybe 9 in 10 Americans, they would say, ``Why are we doing this as a nation?''

Now, I understand a lot of the issues we face are complicated. Yet, quite frankly, some of these issues are not complicated; they are common sense; they become political only in this city. But for most of America, it is just not that complicated. Sometimes I just get frustrated with the language and the things that are coming out of not just the administration but with the things that are happening in our Federal Government right now that, I think, just need to be called out and for us to say: Let's as a Senate sit down and talk about some of these complicated issues. Instead of knee-jerk political reactions, let's try to solve some of these hard things because we are currently talking about it, and things are going sideways instead of things being solved.

Over the past 5 days, we have watched the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank--a big bank in San Francisco and a much smaller bank in New York. For both of them, we have now had the FDIC step in, and they are going to save every single person in the bank and make sure they are whole. Now, that is very different than cyclical. Most Americans know you are insured up to $250,000, but the Biden administration stepped in and said: Oh, no. Everyone is going to be kept 100-percent whole.

The comment that has come out of it has been: Well, we are going to make sure no taxpayers have to be able to cover this bill. Then, if you listen closely, the very next statement is that it is going to come from an assessment on the banks instead.

Let me tell you what that means.

As one of the wealthiest banks in America, which has mostly millionaires who actually bank there--in fact, to show that, for 90 percent of the depositors in Silicon Valley Bank, their deposits exceed $250,000--OK?--90 percent. That is not normal for a bank. For that bank in San Francisco, all of their depositors are going to be bailed out, and the way that they are going to be bailed out is they are going to put a special--what they are calling--assessment on banks across the country.

So let me tell you what is happening in the next few months.

Banks in Oklahoma, in rural towns, are about to pay a special fee to be able to bail out millionaires in San Francisco. Now, what Oklahoma banks and bankers had to do with that bank failure in San Francisco I have no idea, but the comments being made over and over again are that no taxpayer is going to be affected by this. I am sure my bankers will be glad to know that they don't pay taxes anymore, apparently, and I am sure every person who banks there will be interested to know when their bank fees go up and their interest rates go down so as to be able to cover what happened in San Francisco.

Listen, I don't want to see a contagion of banks either, but let's be honest. What is really happening is a backdoor tax increase on every single American. They are just not using the IRS to do it. They are using community banks to do it all over the country--to charge them a quick higher fee, which they know will mean a higher fee to the people who are members of their banks. That is how it is going to get covered rather than the typical way this would get covered--by actually taking that bank, actually doing an auction and auctioning it off to other banks to be able to take it in.

I look at that and say: You can't make this stuff up, in some ways, to be able to say no taxpayer is going to be affected, but quietly taxpayers across the country are going to be affected by this.

Mr. President, I was surprised when I saw the President's budget come out, when he said this is a new budget and a new way to be able to reduce deficits, when the budget proposal he had was $6.8 trillion. That is the spending number--$6.8 trillion. To put this in perspective, in just 2019--4 years ago--the total spending for the Federal Government was $4.4 trillion. That was the last year before COVID--$4.4 trillion. Now, post-COVID, the President's budget is $6.8 trillion in new spending.

Mr. President, I visited with some folks on immigration recently, and it was interesting. In January, the numbers went down a little bit for illegal crossings, so the Department of Homeland Security immediately put out ``numbers are down.'' Even before the month was done, the numbers came out that the numbers were down in January. Now it is the middle of March, and we can't seem to get the numbers for February because the best guesstimates we have is that they have skyrocketed back up again, so the DHS is no longer talking about it.

They have released a new proposal, though, to be able to expedite individuals on asylum, to be able to get through under asylum here, which is a good thing, by the way; but with their current structured proposal, they will do about 500 people a month through this new asylum process and procedures when we actually have 5,000 people a day illegally crossing. So their new proposed answer is how to expedite hearings for 500 people a month when the problem is 5,000 people a day.

In addition to that, the Biden administration just released a new set of rules on what will constitute, as they say, ``violent crimes.'' These are individuals who are illegally present in the country who are due to be deported. They are trying to redefine what ``violent crimes'' mean and who is eligible for deportation in the country. Part of what they are redefining is, Who are sex offenders and how would you define a ``sex offender'' and who would be guilty of that?

Can I just tell you? I won't find very many Americans who would say: We only want part of the illegal sex offenders in the country. Yet the Biden administration is quickly trying to redefine what equals a sex offender and who actually has to be deported from that group.

Mr. President, I met with the Director of the FBI last week and had a conversation about a memo that the FBI put out just a month ago, saying that there is a threat of terrorism coming from traditional Catholics and that they need to have further investigation.

To their credit, the FBI pulled that back quickly after they released it, after the Director saw it, and the Director, unequivocally, distanced himself from it. But why did that ever start in the first place? Why was there an office in the FBI that considered traditional Catholics to be a threat to the country?

In the Federal workforce--it was interesting--just about a month ago, there was a big to-do. As a matter of fact, there were some here, even in this room, who made a big to-do about how the IRS is doing so much better. The literal statement was made: After we pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS now has a much higher percentage of answered calls. And there was a celebration on the floor here.

Well, I have to tell you, that is a good thing to be able to answer more calls because there have been millions of unanswered calls from the IRS. So I went to check the data because so many people were saying the percentage of calls answered is much higher than what it was last year, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. I went and pulled the data on it to be able to look at it and to see what that was, just to be able to check the facts.

Here are the actual facts: Half as many people called the IRS last year as did the year before. In fact, the IRS actually answered 100,000 fewer calls than they did the year before. It is just that so many millions of people stopped calling them, knowing that they are not going to get an answer at all. The percentage looks better because fewer people were trying, but the actual number of answered calls actually went down. Literally, you can't make this stuff up. We need to stop celebrating better percentage when the real facts are fewer calls were actually answered by the IRS.

In the category of ``you can't make this up,'' the Office of Personnel Management, who runs the Federal hiring process--I just wrote a letter to them a few days ago because two of their leadership individuals and senior management team are now going to need to be fired because in their previous employment, they had credible accusations of harassment. This is the office that is designed to be able to oversee hiring in the Federal Government that failed to do background checks on senior management they were hiring.

In the category of ``you can't make this stuff up'' in the Inflation Reduction Act again, there was a lot of to-do about drug pricing and them saying we are now going to control drug pricing. Here is what also has occurred with that: Four drug manufacturers have now pulled new cancer drugs from the American market. Just in the last 6 months, four new cancer drugs have been pulled because they are saying they can't make it work with the new Inflation Reduction Act law.

If I want to stack on top of the Inflation Reduction Act, there was a huge section on green energy within the Inflation Reduction Act--which is really what the act really was, was a new Green New Deal bill. There was a huge section all about how we are going to do more energy production, more battery production for electric batteries. The future of green energy is going to be in America; and as the President said over and over again, it is going to be made in America.

In fact, I sat in on the President's State of the Union Address, and this is what the President said during the State of the Union Address. The President said:

Folks, I know I have been criticized for saying this, but I

am not changing my view. We are going to make sure the supply

chain for America begins in America. The supply chain begins

in America.

So when we do these projects--and, again, I get criticized

about this, but I make no excuses for it--we are going to buy

American. We are going to buy American, folks. And it is

totally--it is totally consistent with international trade

rules. Buy American has been the law since 1933, but for too

long, past administrations--Democrat and Republican--have

fought to get around it but not anymore.

That is what the President said down the hall at the State of the Union Address.

What has happened in the last 3 weeks? The President's team has actually worked with Japan to create a false free-trade agreement because there is an exception in the Inflation Reduction Act that if you want to do green energy production, you have to do it in North America or you have to have a free-trade agreement. We don't have that FTA with Japan, so they are creating a type of FTA with Japan so Japan can sell us batteries. So much for ``the previous administrations are the ones that tried to work around that.''

I would love to say it is isolated, but they just did the same thing with Germany, to create a workaround in the

Inflation Reduction Act's MADE in America Act so that the MADE in America Act and Produced in America Act will now also include Japan and their production, will now also include Germany and their production.

May I just say to you, one of the largest new North American battery manufacturers for EV just got moved to Canada, not the United States-- so much for ``past administrations have fought to get around it, but not anymore.'' This administration is working around the MADE in America, Buy American Act right now for green energy. Where did they get their supplies and their critical minerals? It is not from the United States; it is from China.

In the energy environment--while I am still talking through that as well--the Willow Project has been talked about greatly with Alaska and saying that now ConocoPhillips is going to be able to produce off three platforms more oil coming from Alaska. That is good, by the way. We have a steady supply of oil that can come for a very long time from Alaska, and it has been blocked off over and over and over again, when the law states that property is set aside for energy production.

But in the process, the Biden administration not only allowed three platforms to start producing oil, but then they blocked off 3 million new acres from production--3 million.

There was recently, in the United Arab Emirates, a set of meetings in the Middle East dealing with the Abraham Accords. It is interesting, when I am traveling around that absolutely beautiful country and seeing the wealth that is there, I couldn't help but think, this is what Alaska would look like if the Federal Government would actually allow energy production there like there is energy production in the UAE. But our Nation won't allow it. Instead, we are still buying from other nations rather than allowing full production on our own. You can't make this stuff up.

If you talk to a developer right now, they will tell you it is very hard to develop new neighborhoods and new locations because they can't get transformers, those little boxes that sit on the edges of neighborhoods. Some of those are the transformers that are up high. Those transformers have a 99.55 percent efficiency--99.55 percent efficiency. I wish I had that layer of efficiency.

The Biden administration just put out new rules for those transformers--that are very hard to get right now because they are back-ordered--to add a 0.1 percent new energy efficiency requirement on them. Remember, they are already 99.55 percent efficient. They want them to be 99.65 percent efficient, so they are moving just that little decimal right there. To do that, it is going to slow down production of the transformers again--could be up to 16 months slower--and it will increase the cost by hundreds of millions of dollars.

So when your electricity bill goes up and they are not able to continue building an expansion, that is not the fault of your electric company; that is the fault of your Federal Government right now so they can brag about increasing production by 0.1 percent on something that is already 99.55 percent efficient.

Put this on top of the Biden administration's new exploration to be able to cut off gas stoves. They initially announced from two different Agencies that they are going to try to end gas stoves in America and then quickly pulled that back and only said: Oh, no, we are just going to study gas stoves in America, and we are going to look at trying to be able to shut those off in the future, but we are not going to do that right now leading up to the election because there are millions and millions of people who use gas stoves, which, by the way, have been studied for years across the country.

This is not an issue about particulates in the house; this is an issue about an administration that doesn't care about the cost to the consumer, as long as they can say they got their way.

It is the same exact issue on the EPA's heavy-duty electric vehicle emissions rule. That rule is rightly being addressed by my colleague from Nebraska, who is going after a very simple thing that the EPA is trying to be able to do in this Biden administration that will raise the cost of trucks up to $8,000 per vehicle. Listen, there are a lot of long-haul folks who cannot afford $8,000 per vehicle just to be able to follow a new Biden administration policy.

Listen, I put all these things together because as I read the news and as I go through the different things that I go through on a daily basis and be able to read through things, at some point, I look at it, and I think, Who says this makes sense? Where are these things coming from? If I pull any one of these out and put them in front of the vast majority of people in Oklahoma and ask, Is this the direction the country needs to go, they will say no.

This Senate needs to talk about the direction the Nation is going when you put controls around Agencies, that they just can't make up the rules based on their own preferences.

This is not just an issue for our consumers; this body had a wake-up call this weekend when we watched China broker a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the U.S. State Department was not at the table because our foreign policies are collapsing around the world. That is a threat to American national security. It is not just an absence of American policy making a difference, it is an absence of our American values. When China's values are on the move worldwide, that is not a safer world that we are living in. We need to shift the direction this is going. And it needs to be soon.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I was on the plane--Southwest Airlines to be specific--this particular Monday, flying up from Oklahoma City to Washington, DC, to be able to come here to the office, begin to do a week of work.

The plane was absolutely filled with people coming in that also work in DC in different Agencies, lots of tourist groups that are actually coming up, groups of students that are here. All kinds of folks were on the plane because they were coming to Washington, DC, because it is the Nation's Capital. It is the Nation's Capital and the spot where the entire world--every diplomat from every country--comes to Washington, DC, to be able to meet with Members of the Senate, Members of the House, the President, and the Executive team. They come to be able to interact because this is the central point of the government of the United States. They expect to come and to be able to see the White House, be able to see the Capitol, be able to tour around phenomenal Smithsonian institutions and be able to see that.

This is what they also see when they come to Washington, DC, now. That is the common view that is also around the city because, in the last few years, since the ``defund the police'' movement took over the city council, the city council in Washington, DC, did several things.

They took out student resource officers in schools, saying that SROs--the student resource officers in schools--they were what they called a pipeline from school to prison. So to solve the issues around schools, they just stopped enforcing in the schools. And do you know what has happened? Crime has gone up around schools, and problems have continued in schools.

Crime has gone up 25 percent just in the last year in Washington, DC--just in the last year. So far, in 2023, according to the Metropolitan Police Department--now, remember, we are in March of 2023. So far in 2023, there has already been 38 homicides in this city, 215 assaults with a dangerous weapon, 298 robberies, 164 burglaries, 1,182 motor vehicle thefts, and from last year to this year, arson is already up 300 percent in Washington, DC. And this has become the common sight around the city.

What in the world is going on? In the middle of rampant increase in crime in Washington, DC, the DC City Council's response to this in an overwhelming vote was to reduce penalties for felonies and to be able to say that if you commit a misdemeanor, then you actually have to have a jury trial as well, knowing full well that would clog up the courts, and basically misdemeanors would never be heard, and so they just wouldn't happen. No one would actually get a misdemeanor record in Washington, DC.

So their plan to end this rampant increase in crime is just not to enforce the law, and if you were caught, you would get out faster, to get back to the street to be able to commit crimes again.

Listen, there are amazing people who live in this area, Washington, DC, remarkable residents who love this city and love this country, and they do not want to be afraid for their kids going to school.

We had a gentleman who actually worked full time to provide what they call safe passages for kids to be able to get back and forth from their homes to their schools. His whole focus was just to be able to bring down crime in Washington, DC. He was murdered not long ago on one of those same streets in DC.

This should not be so for this great capital and for this great Nation, and the response should not be, we are just not going to enforce the law. That is what the DC Council has said they are going to do.

To her credit, the Mayor of Washington, DC, vetoed that bill when it came out of the city council, and the city council overrode her veto and said: No, we are going to do it anyway.

In response, Senator Bill Hagerty has brought up what is called a Congressional Review Act, a challenge to this, and he has taken the next step to be able to say it is not just a Congressional Review Act but to say Congress has the responsibility and the right to actually watch over what happens here.

This is not outside the bounds of Congress's responsibility. The U.S. Constitution, article I, section 8, line 17, says this. Here is the responsibility of Congress:

[Congress should] exercise exclusive legislation in all

cases whatsoever over such District . . . as may, by

cessation of particular states, and the acceptance of

Congress, become the seat of government of the United States.

That is describing where we are right now. In our constitutional responsibility, Congress has the responsibility to oversee what is happening in Washington, DC, and to make sure this area is a safe place.

Congress, in decades past, has passed over what is called home rule to Washington, DC, to say to the city council: You have the responsibility to be able to make decisions for what is going on. But Congress still has the congressional, constitutional responsibility to be able to oversee DC. So it is entirely appropriate for Senator Hagerty to bring this up and say it is time that Congress steps in on the city council and speaks out for our constitutional obligation and says we cannot have rampant crime in the seat of our Republic.

This vote that is coming up tomorrow is going to override the city council. It is hard to believe that the U.S. Congress has to vote to override a city council vote, but that is our constitutional responsibility, and we should take that and be able to do it.

This is important for the safety of all those folks who were on that plane with me and for all the folks who are coming next week from Oklahoma who will be on spring break. This city will be full of Oklahomans who come to visit all these museums, and it needs to be a safe place for them to be able to be in, and it needs to be a spot they want come to, not a spot that looks like this everywhere all over the streets. This should not be so.

It is time that we speak out for a simple principle: Defunding the police, decriminalizing criminal activity, taking school resource officers out of schools, and saying ``We just won't enforce the law'' doesn't stop crime; it accelerates crime.

For the good people of Washington, DC, they just want a safe city to live in. For folks who work and tour here, they just want to come to a safe place where they are not afraid. Let's invite them to come see the capital, not see this all over the city.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have to tell you, this past weekend, I stood with the Williams' family and Shaw family, with hundreds of other folks, and I listened to live music in the Historic Big 10 Ballroom.

Now, that may not mean a lot to a lot of folks in this room, but it is a really big deal in my State, in Oklahoma, to hear live music in the Big 10 Ballroom.

Let me set the scene for you: Lonnie Williams was one of the first African-American police officers in Tulsa, OK. Now, I have spoken many times to this body about Greenwood and about the race massacre that happened May 31 and June 1 of 1921.

We have talked at length about what happened during that time for what is, in all likelihood, the worst race massacre in American history. It was in 1921. So for Lonnie Williams to be one of the first Black police officers in Tulsa was really a big deal.

He served in the police department, and he opened up several other businesses as his side hustle, and then, eventually, opened up what he called the Big 10 Ballroom in 1948.

It was a venue for Black artists to be able to come in because in 1948, a lot of Black artists couldn't play in a lot of auditoriums in America, including in my State. So they would invite these great musicians to be able to come through, that they would tour, and there was this kind of behind-the-scenes group of venues that was scattered through the country where Black artists could perform, and the one that we had in Oklahoma was the Big 10.

Now, it was no simple thing for them to be able to travel because at the time when those Black artists were traveling, they couldn't be in a lot of hotels; they couldn't eat in a lot of restaurants. But when they came to Greenwood, there were still families who would welcome them in.

The Williams' family, who owned the Big 10, their family, in fact, would host folks. They still tell stories about getting up in the morning and stepping over the Temptations sleeping in their living room. And when I talk about artists playing in the Big 10, I am not talking about just any artists in American history; I am talking about Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, B.B. King, Fats Domino, Little Richard, and I have already mentioned the Temptations.

Interestingly enough, the last place that Otis Redding played before he died in a plane crash was the Big 10 Ballroom in Tulsa, OK.

Now you know why we call it the Historic Big 10 Ballroom. That Ballroom was the place to be able to get music in North Tulsa for decades, and then it closed down in the 1960s. A lot of urban renewal was happening in that area, and a lot of things were shifting. The building was used for a while as a beauty supply warehouse, quite frankly. The roof caved in eventually as they abandoned it, and it sat idle for more than two decades. Quite frankly, an eyesore in the neighborhood, but to the Williams family and to lots of other folks in North Tulsa, when they drove up and down Apache, they would still see the glory of the Big 10 and what she could be in the days ahead.

But no one took the risk because all that was going to get the Big 10 back alive was hope and a whole bunch of money, until Dr. Lester Shaw stood in the parking lot of the Big 10 and saw it not for what it was-- quite frankly, a place where more pigeons lived than anything else--but for what she could be again.

In 2007, Dr. Shaw bought that building. Quite frankly, his wife was pretty nervous about it, thinking what in the world. But Brenda Shaw knows her husband Lester well, and when he got an idea, she knew it must be from God and it was going to turn out OK because he was going to be tenacious enough to get it done.

You see, Dr. Shaw and Brenda Shaw--by the way, both doctors now, so it is Dr. and Dr. Shaw--the two of them have for the last 23 years committed every second of their spare time to thousands of kids in Greenwood. They run a ministry after school called A Pocket Full of Hope, and a Pocket Full of Hope teaches arts, music, photography, videography.

They invest in the lives of students in that area, and for the last 23 years as they have mentored kids after school--brace yourself--they have helped 100 percent of those kids graduate from high school, not a single one of them hasn't finished high school.

They traveled all over the country, including right here to Washington, DC, to be able to perform music, but they never really had a place to perform. They really never had a place that was their own. In this location, where they have about 350 people a year who come through to be able to be mentored by Pocket players--those who have gone through Pocket Full of Hope in the past and those who are helping--and for Lester Shaw and his leadership, those folks have made a remarkable difference in the community.

Dr. Shaw, in 2007, saw the Big 10 for what she could be again and, last weekend, what she is again.

There is live music again at the Big 10. I was listening to it last weekend as it came alive, and you couldn't imagine how beautiful the inside of that building is, as the community and different groups have all invested dollars and lots of sweat and blood and tears to be able to bring it back again. And when you drive down Apache now, you see the Big 10. You see, Black history is not all ancient history. Black history in America and Black history in my State is still going on right now because people like Lonnie Williams, who set a path for my State and my community decades ago--that baton is being picked up by folks like Dr. Lester Shaw, and they are doing remarkable work to help thousands of students.

So, for me, I was honored to sit and listen to live music in the Big 10. And if anybody is traveling through Tulsa, I would encourage you to swing down Apache and hear live music in the same place where B.B. King and James Brown and Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Count Basie, and Fats Domino sang, the place intended to be able to hear history come alive.

By the way, Big 10 is not called the Big 10 anymore. Now they call it the Historic Big 10.

We are living out history right now, and I am grateful for the Williams family and the legacy they have left and what Dr. Shaw has picked up. God bless them in the work, and we are grateful for what they have done in the past.

I yield the floor.

In 1781, the Revolution had actually ended. The war had stopped. George Washington, then as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, continued to be able to stay on to be able to lead the Army until 1783, until the new government could be formed. In 1783, he came to Annapolis, MD, and Commander in Chief George Washington resigned his commission of the military.

Now, we don't see that as a significant event, but it is one of the most significant events at the beginning of our Nation because, in the past, if you led the Army and you won the war, you would become the leader based on the fact that the Army is behind you. That is the way it had always been in every place, in every country. If you had the Army, you have the power.

George Washington approached the civilian government in the beginnings of a new Republic, resigned his commission, and stepped back to being a private citizen. That event is so significant, John Trumbull, his painting hangs in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol right now. That painting has been hanging there since 1824. In fact, the painting of George Washington resigning his commission is actually older than the dome that it is under.

We don't think about a military leader taking over the United States. That is unthinkable for us because of the path that George Washington laid down behind us.

He did a lot of firsts in a lot of his leadership. He was our first President. He was a civilian leader. After one term, he wanted to be able to step down. In fact, he and Madison actually wrote together a letter to be able to go out to the American people after his first Presidency, but so many people came to him and encouraged him to be able to run again that he relented and ran again. But at the end of his second term, he would not relent and had determined he was not a King, he was not the only person who could lead these new United States, but it was time, after 45 years, for him to step aside.

And this time, with the help of another gentleman whom he had worked with for a long time named Alexander Hamilton--they had served together, even since the Continental Army. He and Alexander Hamilton wrote an address to the American people. This was to be the end of his Presidency and of his public service. It was actually--interestingly enough, it is referred to as ``George Washington's Farewell Address,'' but he never actually spoke it. They wrote it, and then they published it together.

Many people don't know that George Washington didn't like speaking in public and wasn't akin to coming to make big public speeches. So they published it, and it became a signature.

This speech begins with a farewell to the Nation, saying: I am stepping aside as President of these United States. Then he goes on to be able to challenge the Nation in multiple areas, beginning with being careful in the days ahead.

He saw the seeds of factions and of political parties beginning to rise, and he challenged the Nation. He challenged the Nation to be able to hold fast to its faith and to be able to live the principles of its faith.

He challenged the Nation on the issue of debt and to be able to say don't be a nation that carries a lot of debt. You will have times of war when you will have to carry it, but pay it off as quickly as possible.

He challenged the Nation in the issue of foreign entanglements and foreign alliances, and he challenged the Nation to forgive him of any mistakes that he might have made while he was leading the Nation.

This nonspeech speech that he presented to the Nation has become a signature for now more than two centuries. It wasn't set aside. In fact, during the Civil War, for the first time, Members of Congress gathered on the other side of the building in the brandnew House Chamber in 1862, where House and Senate, with all the military leadership, gathered together in one room and read it out loud as a reminder to the Nation of our beginnings and as an encouragement to all the legislators during the Civil War.

It was set aside again until 1893 when the Senate picked it back up again and a Senator was chosen to be able to read it out loud to the Senate. It was done in 1893 and 1894 and then stopped in 1895 but then picked up again in 1896 and has been read every single year since 1896, in this Chamber, right around George Washington's birthday--a fitting tribute to a President who did much to be able to establish who we are as a country.

I am honored today to be the one selected to be able to speak this speech. I am also honored to be able to note that I am the first Oklahoman in the history of the Senate to actually read this speech out loud in the Senate.

Now, we are a young State. We have only been a State since 1907, but we have only been reading it out loud since 1893. So we have been there for most of the time. So I am honored to be able to give to you ``George Washington's Farewell Address'' and his look to the future of our Nation to say: These are the things I would request that you do not forget.

Mr. LANKFORD at the rostrum, read the Farewell Address, as follows: To the people of the United States

Friends and Fellow-Citizens: The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.

I beg you at the same time to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country--and that, in withdrawing the tender of service which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both.

The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in, the office to which your suffrages have twice called me have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence, impelled me to abandon the idea.

I rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that in the present circumstances of our country you will not disapprove my determination to retire.

The impressions with which I first undertook the arduous trust were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust, I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious in the outset of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself, and every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied that if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

In looking forward to the moment which is intended to terminate the career of my public life, my feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country for the many honors it has conferred upon me, still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment by services faithful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our country from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise and as an instructive example in our annals that, under circumstances in which the passions agitated in every direction were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these states, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.

Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger natural to that solicitude, urge me on an occasion like the present to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not dissimilar occasion.

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this

truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts-- of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the Union of the whole.

The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South in the same intercourse, benefitting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort--and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.

While then every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value! they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same government, which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence likewise they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations--northern and southern--Atlantic and western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head. They have seen in the negotiation by the executive--and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate--of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the general government and in the Atlantic states unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi. They have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens?

To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a Constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Towards the preservation of your government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions, that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country, that facility in changes upon the credit of mere hypotheses and opinion exposes to perpetual change from the endless variety of hypotheses and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable; liberty itself will find in such a govern ment, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is indeed little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true--and in governments of a monarchical cast patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should cooperate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties) ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we re-main one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by justice shall counsel.

Why forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rival-ship, interest, humor, or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world--so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it, for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements (I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy)--I repeat it therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce but forcing nothing; establishing with powers so disposed--in order to give to trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants,

and to enable the government to support them--conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view, that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another--that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character--that by such acceptance it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish--that they will control the usual current of the passions or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good, that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism--this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare by which they have been dictated.

How far in the discharge of my official duties I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them.

In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my proclamation of the 22d of April 1793 is the index to my plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice and by that of your representatives in both houses of Congress, the spirit of that measure has continually governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or divert me from it.

After deliberate examination with the aid of the best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take--and was bound in duty and interest to take--a neutral position. Having taken it, I determined, as far as should depend upon me, to maintain it with moderation, perseverence, and firmness.

The considerations which respect the right to hold this conduct it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only observe that, according to my understanding of the matter, that right, so far from being denied by any of the belligerent powers, has been virtually admitted by all.

The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.

The inducements of interest for observing that conduct will best be referred to your own reflections and experience. With me, a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.

Though in reviewing the incidents of my administration I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat, in which I promise myself to realize without alloy the sweet enjoyment of partaking in the midst of my fellow citizens the benign influence of good laws under a free government--the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors and dangers.

Geo. Washington. United States, 19th September 1796.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I have been on this floor many times to speak to this body about the issue of immigration on our southwest border. It is an issue. It has been an issue for the past couple of years, and, unfortunately, it continues to get worse.

As I talk to people in Oklahoma, they are very open to immigration. They just want legal immigration, and they want our system set up in such a way to incentivize legal immigration. But that is not what is happening right now.

Seven of us, 2 weeks ago, in a bipartisan codel, went to the southwest border, and we spent a couple of days there in the El Paso area and then over into Yuma, AZ, just to be able to visit with the folks on the line, with the folks in the communities, to be able to talk to those individuals who are taking care of human needs, to say: What is going on on the ground? What do we need to know?

I have been to the border many times. So I have had the opportunity to be able to hear some of the other reports, but it is always interesting just to be able to get the perspective of what is happening right now, because, as they say along the border, if you have been to one spot on the border, you have been to one spot on the border because it is different in each area, what they are facing.

Let me give you just one story from this. When we visited with the sheriff and with the city manager and with the mayor of a small town in Arizona named Yuma, AZ--Yuma, AZ, is right on the border. It is an ag community. If you have eaten a salad in the past year, you have eaten something from Yuma, AZ, because they grow the vast majority of the lettuce for our country. Yuma, AZ, 3 years ago, in that area, had 8,100 people illegally cross in that year. For that one small town, they were trying to manage 8,100 people crossing 3 years ago. This past year, Yuma, AZ, had 310,000 people illegally cross the area.

So in 3 years, they went from 8,000 people illegally crossing to 310,000 people illegally crossing in a year. They are overwhelmed.

May I remind you, the mayor of New York is worried about an additional 40 to 50,000 people in New York City and having a difficult time absorbing that. Yuma, AZ, is trying to figure out how to absorb 310,000 people coming through their community.

The issues are complicated and they are difficult, but they are not unachievable. It is an issue of how are we going to enforce the law.

Now, I would tell you that I have met with the Border Patrol many times over the years, and one of the things they will often talk to me about is that they finally get a break each December because, typically, of Christmas, quite frankly, not as many people cross illegally during Christmastime. They stay home with families. And so December is usually a down month for illegal crossings, and it is year after year after year, until this year.

This year, there was a record number of people illegally crossing in December. So instead of going down, it actually went up when a quarter million people illegally crossed our southwest border in 1 month. That was last month, in December, a quarter million people.

This is a growing issue that requires attention, and it is not just the people this year. It is also all the other complications that come with it, because the Border Patrol is very clear: While we are managing this massive number of people coming from all over the world across that border, we can't go interdict drugs, we can't go interdict other things because we don't have the manpower to be able to do both.

So, again, last month, drug seizures in the United States increased 17.5 percent. In 1 month, it went up. This is an issue that requires real focus, and my concern is that the numbers are so large and it is so out of control that people are just saying: It is too big. I am not going to deal with it.

But the chaos along our border is continuing.

Now, the administration has made some bold statements of late. They said we are going to dramatically increase the number of people who are going to have expedited removal attached to them. Now, that sounds really severe--``expedited removal.'' They

are going to have extradited removal when they get there. Except, when we ran the numbers to be able to look at it, at how many people are actually removed who get expedited removal, the number came back 7 percent.

So expedited removal doesn't actually mean removal. It is just a title that is being placed on individuals. So nothing is really changing there.

And as I mentioned before, these are not just individuals from Central America or from Mexico. These are individuals coming from all over the world.

When our bipartisan codel was down on the border a few weeks ago, we watched two individuals who had just been picked up by mounted patrol as they were running across the border. But they were not running faster than the mounted patrol, which was able to catch up with them, and they were able to arrest them. Those two individuals were Chinese nationals who were making their way across the border illegally at night, running from the Border Patrol.

People from all over the world are coming because there is an invitation to illegally cross the border. People are coming right now because it is actually easier to get a job in America. If you are living in another country and you want to work in America, it is easier to get a job in America if you illegally cross.

That is not just me saying that. That is the data saying that. If you are outside the United States and you apply for a work visa and want to be able to come in in a legal, normal process, to be able to go through, currently it is 6\1/2\ months to be able to get that work visa--6\1/2\ months. But if you illegally cross our border and you are labeled with ``parole''--and the mass number of people are labeled with ``parole'' when they illegally cross our border--you get a work permit within 3 to 4 weeks. So you could legally do this and wait 6\1/2\ months or you could illegally do this and you get it in 3 to 4 weeks. Literally, this administration is incentivizing illegal activity with how they are setting up the work permits.

Listen, there are a lot of things this Congress needs to do to be able to deal with illegal immigration. I have stated over and over and over again that the asylum laws need to change. We have got to do a real fix. This is the issue, and it has been multiple administrations that have said that this is the problem. In fact, this administration, just in the last month, has floated the idea of changing the regulation on how they actually handle asylum, and I have affirmed them for that. That has got to change in the way it is being implemented. It also needs to change in law in the way we handle it here.

But there is also the legal process of actually enforcing our laws on the southern border that will make a significant difference not incentivizing individuals to be able to illegally cross our border. There are things the administration can do, and they are not doing currently. There are things that this body needs to do that we have not taken up.

Two hundred and fifty thousand people illegally crossed our southwest border last month. When are we going to act on this problem? It needs to be now.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are in a historic season as a country. We are pausing to ask ourselves a question that quite frankly we have not really asked ourselves in a long time: When does life begin?

It is not just philosophical. It is not just theological. It is not just scientific. It is personal, as each person has to come to a decision: When does life begin?

And when the Supreme Court made the Dobbs decision last summer, that actually put America back in the position that it had been in historically. Our Nation is 234 years old, and for 185 of those years, each State passed State laws to be able to determine the decision about this issue of when does life begin.

So the Dobbs decision was not a radical decision. It is the typical decision for Americans, quite frankly, for 185 of our 234 years. But it doesn't settle the issue of abortion. Abortion is still legal in America. As much as there is all the noise around the country right now that abortion has somehow gone away, it certainly has not. Abortion is still all over the country.

But it has pushed Americans, and it has pushed Americans specifically on this one issue: When does life begin?

Quite frankly, I have had fascinating conversations with people over the past 8 months that they had never actually contemplated this issue, that they had never stopped to be able to think about it. They just said: Abortion is legal. Abortion is legal. It is just a woman's choice, a woman's choice, a woman's choice, and I don't want to think about it.

But when the decision came down, a lot of people had to stop and say: When does life begin? Is it at birth? Is it after birth? Is it 10 minutes before birth? Is it a month before birth? Is it 2 months before birth?

Quite frankly, I have had this conversation with a lot of folks, and some folks have told me: Well, it is at viability.

And I say: OK. Define viability for me, because viability in 1973, when the Court was struggling with Roe v. Wade, was very different than viability now. Medical science has advanced tremendously. So is viability 26 weeks or is it at 21 weeks of gestation? And if it is at 21 weeks, what is the difference between 20 weeks and 19 weeks? What is the difference between 18 weeks?

I look at these two pictures right here of this child--this one is out of the womb, and this one is 5 months earlier--and I ask the simple question: What is the difference between these two pictures of this child?

The only difference between that sonogram picture in the womb and that child outside of the womb is time. That is it.

The same DNA is in this child as in this child--the same parents, the same development. Everything is the same. The only difference is time.

I am 5 months older than I was 5 months ago because I have aged 5 months. So did that child from that moment.

So my question is very simple: When is a child a child? When does life begin? Is this one not alive and this one is alive simply because he is 5 months older? When is a child a child?

For 50 years, there have been a group of folks--this year there were tens of thousands--who gather out on the Mall just to be able to celebrate every single child. They have done it now for five decades, since the Roe v. Wade decision came down. They have gathered on the Mall, and they just said: We believe every child is valuable--every child. There aren't some children who are disposable and some children who are valuable. We think every child is valuable.

Now, that is not a radical concept. I have folks who yell and scream at me, quite frankly, and say: A woman has the right to be able to choose.

And I ask just the very simple question of them, in great respect: Has the right to choose to be able to take the life of a child at what age?

Because that child is valuable and so is that child, because it is the same child, just at a different age.

I celebrate the folks who have for five decades gathered on The Mall and have marched for life and have said: We will not forget the value of every single child, because tens of millions of children have died in this country in the last 50 years after the Roe v. Wade decision.

While abortion is still available in America, everyone is having to pause and ask a simple question: What do I believe about life? Not what is convenient; what do I believe about life?

I have been very outspoken on this floor about my frustration with the Biden administration. I have not held back on this because they are the most pro-abortion Presidency in American history. They actively work on increasing the number of abortions in America, and I find that not only appalling, I find that painful, that we as a nation have a policy of finding ways to increase the death of children. That is not who we should be as a nation. We should be working to be able to protect the life of every single child.

The most basic science that anyone will work through is, if you look at this child in the womb, there is no difference in this child and this child outside the womb. That is the most basic of science.

If you want to look at science, look at science, but then ask yourself the personal question as well: When does life begin?

The argument about abortion--it is not just a legal argument. Everyone wants to take it to a legal issue, quite frankly, because this body is a legal body, but the issue of abortion is not just a legal issue, and it is not just about making abortion illegal in the country. I would tell you, I am working to make abortion unthinkable in this country because we look past the convenience and look at this child's face and say: Why does that child not deserve life like every one of us? Because at its most basic level, there is no difference between any one of us in this room and when we were at this stage right here in our mother's womb except for time.

So I ask this body a simple question: When does life begin, and are some children really disposable and some children are valuable? That is the question each of us needs to decide, and I am proud to stand with those who have marched for 50 years to say children are valuable, all of them--all of them.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is another time for me to be back on this floor again to talk about an issue I have talked about before, but it is a little bit different this time.

I have brought to this floor several times and have asked for unanimous consent for a very, very simple bill called the Conscience Protection Act. The Conscience Protection Act is a bill that would protect religious liberty and freedom and conscience benefits for healthcare workers across the country. It is really not that controversial. In fact, let me show you how noncontroversial this really is.

When the church amendments, years ago--decades ago, even--were put in by Congress to be able to protect the conscience rights of individuals and entities that object to performing or assisting an abortion or a sterilization in violation of their religious belief and conscience, that passed this body 92 to 1. So 92 to 1, this body voted and said: Of course, we want to protect the rights of individuals and not have to be compelled to perform an abortion if it is against their moral faith. That seems normal. In a normal conversation everywhere else, that would be straightforward and simple--until now.

Here is what is happening now: A nurse who had told her employer that she did not want to perform an abortion, that she had a moral objection to that, worked in this hospital. One day, the hospital was running short on staff, and so they called her in, didn't tell her what the procedure was, and when she walks into the surgery area, the doctor looks at her and says: Don't hate me--meaning, we know full well what your belief is--but we are short-staffed, and we need another nurse; you are going to do this. The hospital informed her: You will lose your job if you don't do this right now, when everyone knew what her moral conviction was.

Now, the way that the law is set up, it is set up to say, for that person who had an entity deliberately violate her moral conscience, then the government steps in and presses against the employer and says: You can't do that. That is the way it is supposed to work. In fact, that is the way it was working until Xavier Becerra came in to HHS, looked at the case, and dropped it and said: You get no recourse-- because the administration is pro-abortion. It doesn't matter what your belief is; it is what the administration's belief is.

So the response to that is pretty straightforward: Allow an individual who has been harmed to have what is called a private right of action; that they don't have to wait for government to intervene on their behalf to have a private right of action so that an individual, if government doesn't intervene on their behalf, they can intervene.

I have brought that to this floor several times, and I have been told: That is controversial. That is divisive. Then this week, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act on the White House lawn with a special feature in it called a private right of action. So if individuals who felt--and the language says--that they were harmed because of the disagreement of others on their same-sex marriage, they didn't have to wait on government to be able to intervene on their behalf; they could do it.

I was told this was belt-and-suspenders. I was told, of course, the government is going to step in on their behalf; but in case they don't, they need a private right of action so that they can stand up for their own beliefs.

It is fascinating to me that what I have asked for for people of conscience who don't want to perform abortions but are compelled to do so by their employer, that was a radical concept, that we couldn't have a private right of action for them, but it was required in the Respect for Marriage Act. In fact, I brought an amendment to take that out to say: This is going to lead to a lot of lawsuits. And my colleagues said: Oh, no. Oh, no. And voted against that.

So now I am going to ask a very simple question: Is this body going to give a private right of action to some people they philosophically believe in, but other people they philosophically don't believe in don't get that same right? Are we going to discriminate today against people of faith and say: You do not get this right; other people do? That is my simple question for today.

This is not a radical request. This is a real-life issue that is occurring right now, where this administration will not intervene on behalf of individuals who have a religious, longstanding moral objection to being compelled to perform an abortion.

Let's give them their private right of action so that employers don't feel like this administration can look the other way and they can do whatever they want to their employees or fire them, regardless of what their religious beliefs are.

This used to not be a radical concept. It was 92 to 1. This is not intended to be a radical concept today. It is a simple statement: Is this body going to discriminate against people of faith today? That is my question.

So, Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 401, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Apparently, a woman has a right to control her own body unless her boss compels her to perform an abortion, and then she no longer has control over her own body--her boss does. And he can tell her: Perform this abortion against your faith, or I will fire you--and that is OK.

So choice seems to only go one way. If you choose to perform abortions, you are accepted in our culture. If you believe a child with 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and unique DNA and a functioning nervous system is actually a child, then you are an outlier, and your opinion doesn't count. The only thing that counts is you are compelled to take the life of more children and stand there and watch it. I think that is wrong.

No, this bill doesn't get into--as Senator Murphy said, it doesn't get into speaking out about the violence against abortion clinics or, quite frankly, get into the violence on pregnancy resource centers that have been firebombed by pro-abortion folks, who have been spray- painted, who have threatened and attacked people who want to give sonograms to individuals who are pregnant. It doesn't deal with any of those because, quite frankly, that is a different committee. That is over in the Judiciary Committee.

This is a very narrow bill dealing with one simple topic. It doesn't deal with everything on abortion. It doesn't decrease abortions in America. It doesn't do anything like that. It is simple and straightforward. It says: Is this government going to compel people to violate their faith? Apparently, the answer today is yes from this body; we don't care what you believe. I think that is sad, and I think that shows how far we have moved as a nation when it used to be 92 to 1 that we would say: If you have a different opinion, that is OK in America. But now you can't have a different opinion. That is not right.

I would hope this body would speak out and say at some point that we respect all opinions in America and would speak out for the right of conscience for people of faith.

I yield the floor.